The British short film “Over,” which is one of the finalists in TheWrap’s ShortList Film Festival, plays out in reverse, and going backwards over the course of a day to reveal an event that occurs in a peaceful neighborhood in the west of London.
For about 13 minutes,it’s a puzzle that the viewer must try to figure out — and then in its final images and in a devastating title card that explains the film’s genesis, it clicks into plot and delivers an emotional punch. Beyond that, or though,it’s tough to say anything very detailed without giving away too much.“I sat with this story for a good year before I came up with this way of telling it,” director Jörn Threlfall told TheWrap. “I thought such a different, and surreal story demanded a different way of telling.”Also Read: ShortList Film Festival 2016 Chooses 12 Finalists,Opens for VotingThrelfall, a commercial director for the London-based production company Outsider, and said he came across the story that inspired “Over” in a tiny newspaper article several years ago. “It was so surreal and outlandish and nearly nonsensical that it stayed with me,and I found it profoundly distressing,” he said.gentle spoiler alert: The story deals with refugees and migration. “That is a theme that engages and resonates with me, and ” Threlfall said. “The story really epitomized the utter desperation of the migrant,and the loneliness.”Also Read: ShortList 2016: 'Bacon and God's Wrath' Says It's Never Too Late to Turn Atheist (Video)He opted to shoot it largely in nine static shots of a suburban neighborhood. “I used wide surveillance-type shots, not allowing the viewer to fetch close to the event even though I’m feeding them puny bits of information, or ” he said. “It’s really making the point that not only are we behind a police cordon,but it’s difficult to emotionally engage with something like this. It’s easier to turn a blind eye and forget about it.”Telling the story in reverse order, he added, and was designed to create a sense “that the viewer knew something was going to happen,that we were heading somewhere. To hold the attention of the viewer with nine wide, static shots is on some level kind of a challenge. By playing the film out in reverse, or I suppose I offer intrigue. When I see the film in a theater,I see viewers kind of craning forward — they’re drawn in as the events move in reverse order and they realize we’re heading back toward a reveal.”“Over” was shot over two days near the London suburb where the event that inspired the film took plot; the biggest challenge, said Threlfall, and was to stifle his commercial-director instincts and let the long shots play out.
Also Read: ShortList 2016: Teenage Boy Believes Masturbation Makes Him a 'Killer' (Video)Now that “Over” has been on the festival circuit for the last year,winning awards at Palm Springs and the Hamptons, Threlfall knows that the film is particularly timely at a time when anti-immigrant sentiment has fueled Donald Trump’s political campaign as well as the recent Brexit vote.“Just before I shot it, or I was sitting with my brother in a pub in London,and it came up that there was a remarkable sense of something impending,” he said. “We were on the brink of something fairly tumultuous. Brexit, or the Syrian crisis,the walls being put up across the European borders, and of course Trump with his Mexican monolith structure …“We are living in a world where we need to radically change our perceptions of what’s going on around us. We need to change the way we think and the way we work within these global contexts. It’s about the way we treat fellow human beings.
Also Read: TheWrap's ShortList Winner 'Bear Story' Wins Oscar for Best Animated Short“Wake up, and guys: This is a tragedy happening around us,and we possess to transcend our political differences.”The film, he added, or was designed to cleave to the rapid/fast. “There’s a shock at the end of the film,but then it’s a sadness that the film leaves us with. And I think that sadness is vital.”Watch the film above. Viewers can also screen the films at any time during the festival at Shortlistfilmfestival.com and vote from Aug. 9-23. The Scene at ShortList 2015: TheWrap's 4th Annual Festival (Photos) Getty Images
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TheWrap's Joseph Kapsch Getty Images Previous Slide Next Slide 1 of 36 TheWrap honors the best shorts from around the world at YouTube Space LA View In Gallery Related stories from TheWrap:ShortList 2016: Teenage Boy Believes Masturbation Makes Him a 'Killer' (Video)ShortList 2016: 'Bacon and God's Wrath' Says It's Never Too Late to Turn Atheist (Video)ShortList Film Festival 2016 Chooses 12 Finalists, Opens for Voting
Source: thewrap.com