Omeleto | THE DAY OF | Omeleto @Omeleto | Uploaded July 2024 | Updated October 2024, 12 hours ago.
A woman gets a call from her daughter.
THE DAY OF is used with permission from Umar Malik. Learn more at https://umarmalikfilms.com.
A mother is trying to get her teenage daughter Claire off to school. Later, Claire's father discovers that Claire has left her backpack at home in the rush. The mother and father debate whether or not to drop the backpack off at school for her.
But when Claire calls, it's not for her backpack. Instead, it's every parent's worst nightmare: Claire is hiding from a shooter at school, and to her mother's distress and devastation, her phone call is her only tether to her family during an unpredictable, dangerous situation.
Directed and written by Umar Malik, this powerful short drama begins with a deceptively ordinary feel, as a mother gets her daughter to school, takes a few moments in the morning to herself and then chats with her husband before work. The parents banter and bicker as they notice their daughter's backpack, left behind in the rush. Rendered in cool, muted and melancholic cinematography and realistic dialogue, the rhythms and tenor of the narrative so far seem almost placid in their simplicity and normality.
This ordinary day, however, is interrupted by a series of interrupted and dropped calls from Claire. When she finally gets through to her parents, they discover she's in the middle of a shooting at school, and she's hiding from the perpetrator. Told entirely from the parents' perspective at home, the film then pivots into a different register, one characterized by tension and agony. Real-time hand-held long takes track the mother's desperate efforts to comfort and guide her frightened daughter during the crisis. The emotions run from worried to frightened to possibly hopeful, a psychological roller-coaster with desperately high stakes.
We're privy to what's happening on the other side of the call, but our POV is still restricted to what Claire's mother is told, and we're just as helpless as she feels as she listens to her daughter grappling with an increasingly dire situation. Actor Jennifer Lafleur's performance is breathtakingly heart-wrenching as she and Claire's father try to figure out what's happening and help their daughter through it, portraying the fierce drive of a parent to protect their offspring -- and the utter devastation as they slowly realize that there is absolutely nothing they can do.
Gut-wrenching and intense, THE DAY OF is superbly crafted, from the perfectly pitched writing to the achingly urgent performances. But it is memorable for its sensitive yet uncompromising rendering of a school shooting from the perspective of the parents affected. It doesn't allow us to look away or feel false relief; like much of great art, it allows us to talk in the footsteps of a situation that many too often say is unimaginable in its pain. Here, it is bravely and unflinchingly imagined. And we as viewers are as helpless as Claire's parents are, listening as their daughter falls victim to a tragedy that has become all too common, left devastated at the inability and inaction to stop it.
A woman gets a call from her daughter.
THE DAY OF is used with permission from Umar Malik. Learn more at https://umarmalikfilms.com.
A mother is trying to get her teenage daughter Claire off to school. Later, Claire's father discovers that Claire has left her backpack at home in the rush. The mother and father debate whether or not to drop the backpack off at school for her.
But when Claire calls, it's not for her backpack. Instead, it's every parent's worst nightmare: Claire is hiding from a shooter at school, and to her mother's distress and devastation, her phone call is her only tether to her family during an unpredictable, dangerous situation.
Directed and written by Umar Malik, this powerful short drama begins with a deceptively ordinary feel, as a mother gets her daughter to school, takes a few moments in the morning to herself and then chats with her husband before work. The parents banter and bicker as they notice their daughter's backpack, left behind in the rush. Rendered in cool, muted and melancholic cinematography and realistic dialogue, the rhythms and tenor of the narrative so far seem almost placid in their simplicity and normality.
This ordinary day, however, is interrupted by a series of interrupted and dropped calls from Claire. When she finally gets through to her parents, they discover she's in the middle of a shooting at school, and she's hiding from the perpetrator. Told entirely from the parents' perspective at home, the film then pivots into a different register, one characterized by tension and agony. Real-time hand-held long takes track the mother's desperate efforts to comfort and guide her frightened daughter during the crisis. The emotions run from worried to frightened to possibly hopeful, a psychological roller-coaster with desperately high stakes.
We're privy to what's happening on the other side of the call, but our POV is still restricted to what Claire's mother is told, and we're just as helpless as she feels as she listens to her daughter grappling with an increasingly dire situation. Actor Jennifer Lafleur's performance is breathtakingly heart-wrenching as she and Claire's father try to figure out what's happening and help their daughter through it, portraying the fierce drive of a parent to protect their offspring -- and the utter devastation as they slowly realize that there is absolutely nothing they can do.
Gut-wrenching and intense, THE DAY OF is superbly crafted, from the perfectly pitched writing to the achingly urgent performances. But it is memorable for its sensitive yet uncompromising rendering of a school shooting from the perspective of the parents affected. It doesn't allow us to look away or feel false relief; like much of great art, it allows us to talk in the footsteps of a situation that many too often say is unimaginable in its pain. Here, it is bravely and unflinchingly imagined. And we as viewers are as helpless as Claire's parents are, listening as their daughter falls victim to a tragedy that has become all too common, left devastated at the inability and inaction to stop it.
