On a winter night in Atlantic City, the manager of a defunct casino must reckon with his parental failures when his unruly son needs help out of an illicit bind. Year of production 2021 Length 16min Country USA Shooting Format 35mm Aspect Ratio 1.85:1 Dialogue English DirectorIan Barling Producer Jordan Drake, Bruno Vernaschi, Ian Barling, Sam Kaminer Production Riparius Pictures Executive Producer Aaron Craig Writer Ian Barling CinematographerAnna Franquesa-Solano Editor Ian Barling, Sercan Sezgin Production Design Daniel Ornitz Costume Designer Monique Vatine Sound Guido Berenblum, Manuel De Andrés CastWill Patton, Philip Ettinger, Noa Fisher, Cindy Katz, Skipp Sudduth, Brett Diggs, Lada Doukhnai, Kevin Cronin, Leo Troy
Festival selections Semaine de la Critique du Festival de Cannes 2021, France - World Premiere Nashville Film Festival 2021, USA GwangHwaMun International Short Film Festival 2021, South Korea Tirana International Film Festival 2021, Albania Montclair Film Festival 2021, USA - Best New Jersey Short Award Naples International Film Festival 2021, USA ZINEBI - Festival Internacional de Cine Documental y Cortometraje de Bilbao 2021, Spain CINEMAFORUM 2021, Poland RIFF - Rome Independent Film Festival 2021, Italy Laceno d'oro International Film Festival 2021, Italy Festival du court métrage de Clermont-Ferrand 2022, France Semana de Cine de Medina del Campo 2022, Spain Akbank Short Film Festival 2022, Turkey Ca' Foscari Short Film Festival 2022, Italy - Special mention Le Giornate della Luce, Best Photography Fastnet Film Festival 2022, Ireland Festival Internacional de Cine de Huesca 2022, Spain FEST - New Directors/New Films Festival 2022, Portugal ShorTS - International Film Festival 2022, Italy Bucharest Short Film Festival 2022, Romania - Best Actor Award (Will Patton) Cisterna Film Festival - International Short Film Festival 2022, Italy ANONIMUL - International Independent Film Festival 2022, Romania HollyShorts Film Festival 2022, USA Festival Internacional de Escuelas de Cine 2022, Uruguay The Black Sea Film Festival 2022, Romania BuSho Film Festival 2022, Hungary Minikino Film Week – Bali International Short Film Festival 2022, Indonesia DC Shorts International Film Festival 2022, USA PriFest - Prishtina International Film Festival 2022, Kosovo Tripoli Film Festival 2022, Lebanon Festival Internacional de Cine Corto de Cali 2022, Colombia Donosskino Short Film Festival 2022, Spain - Best Short Film Award Kaohsiung Film Festival 2022, Taiwan Still Voices Short Film Festival 2022, Ireland Barcelona International Short Film Festival 2022, Spain - Best Cinematography Award, Best Short Film Award Castellinaria Film Festival 2022, Switzerland Planos Film Festival 2022, Portugal Hayah Festival Internacional de Cortometrajes de Panamá 2022 Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival 2022, Ukraine Festival International Séquence Court-Métrage 2022, France International Usak Short Film Festival 2022, Turkey Cairo Shorts Film Festival 2022, Egypt Sanfici - Santander Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente 2023, Colombia Zoom - Zblizenia International Film Festival 2023, Poland CINEMAPÚA International Student Short Film Festival 2023, Philippines Director's Note At its core, this film explores two central questions of great personal weight:
The first: Does a parent’s responsibility to protect his or her wayward child have limits? I was raised in Atlantic City by a single mother who did all in her power to give me a better life than she had. In addition to providing love and support, she often claimed she would do anything to protect me. And one day, she followed up on that promise. I was 16 and it was the day before I was to take the SAT, the standard U.S. college entrance exam. An argument with a classmate after school spiraled into a fistfight. When the police arrived, I evaded them, ran home and told my mom what happened. Moments later, an officer knocked on the door and asked for me. What does mom do? She claims I’d been home for hours, that there was no way I could’ve been in the fight because I was busy studying for the SAT. In other words, she saves my behind. The events of that day caused me to see my mother in a different light, and prompted questions surrounding parenting and familial love that have stayed with me until now. Would she really do anything to protect me? What if in doing so, she put herself in danger? Or what if I didn’t necessarily deserve to be protected, or if my behavior was related to a larger issue like long-term drug abuse, an extremely common affliction in Atlantic City that has affected countless of my friends and family? Would she still stand by my side and attempt to shield me from harm? And if so, is this position ethical, just, excusable? While I don’t profess to have concrete answers, I can say that the questions themselves served as a fertile foundation from which to attempt to build a complex, thought-provoking and personal narrative. The second: Are there real-world limits to privilege and entitlement? Atlantic City is a land of extreme contrast. Massive, opulent casinos butted up against impoverished housing projects; gaudy mansions across the street from condemned prewar bungalows; the vehicles of the ultra-privileged sharing the road with those of the underserved. Raised by a single working mother in Atlantic City, I was caught between these two worlds and often felt a palpable tension between them. And from my experience, these tensions often arose from a sense of entitlement, conscious or not, amongst the privileged class. Unsavory behavior was often excused or even expected, and double standards ran rampant. At times it seemed as if the saying “they got away with murder” could be applied literally, on a regular basis. I’ve long been interested in exploring this dynamic between the haves and have-nots of my hometown, interested in pushing it to extremes in order to expose truths of human psychology. What happens when someone who has been given everything he’s ever wanted, and who feels he deserves everything he has, gets himself in a situation in which his privileged status may not help him? How does he behave? How does he process the unfolding of events and the actions of others? Might he reflect on anything about himself or his distinct position in society? As in the previous point, I don’t claim definitive answers or to speak for everyone through my work. What I do hope, though, is to explore our flawed human condition in an honest, surprising and insightful fashion. Ian Barling
