Big Picture Big Sound

Shok Makes It All Worth It

Ave Maria, (Basil Khalil and Eric Dupont)
Day One, (Henry Hughes)
Everything Will Be Okay (Alles Wird Gut), (Patrick Vollrath)
Shok, (Jamie Donoughue)
Stutterer, (Benjamin Cleary and Serena Armitage)

One is great. One is good. The rest are okay.

Ave Maria. Five nuns living in the West Bank find their routine disrupted when the car of a family of Israeli settlers breaks down outside the convent. Unable to use the telephone due to Sabbath restrictions, the family needs help from the nuns, but the sisters' vow of silence requires them to work with their visitors to find an unorthodox solution. Light, silly, slapsticky fun. Feh.

Day One. On the heels of a painful divorce, an Afghan-American woman joins the U.S. military as an interpreter and is sent to Afghanistan. On her first mission, she accompanies troops pursuing a bomb-maker, and must bridge the gender and culture gap to help the man's pregnant wife when she goes into labor. Very powerful and tense. The premise of the conflict is odd to our way of thinking, but nevertheless real.

Everything Will Be Okay (Alles Wird Gut). Michael, a divorced father devoted to his eight-year-old daughter, Lea, picks her up for their usual weekend together. At first it feels like a normal visit, but Lea soon realizes that something is different, and so begins a fateful journey. Starts promisingly, but once it becomes apparent what's wrong, it becomes slow and dragging, something hard for a short to accomplish.

Shok. In Kosovo in 1998, two young boys are best friends living normal lives, but as war engulfs their country, their daily existence becomes filled with violence and fear. Soon, the choices they make threaten not only their friendship, but their families and their lives. Outstanding from beginning to end. Feels like a great full-length feature despite being only 21 minutes in length.

Stutterer. For a lonely typographer, an online relationship has provided a much-needed connection without revealing the speech impediment that has kept him isolated. Now, however, he is faced with the proposition of meeting his online paramour in the flesh, and thereby revealing the truth about himself. Very clever and innovative, but its ending felt cheap and easy.