"The Awakening" is an American 8-minute black-and-white live action movie from 1990, so this one will soon have its 30th anniversary. The writers are Nacho Cerdà and Ethan Jacobsen and these two also directed together with Francisco Stohr. All 3 of them also play minor parts in here. For Stohr it is almost the only career effort here, while for Jacobsen, it actually is the only, but Cerdà went on to have a big career afterwards as a filmmaker after this, his first filmmaking credit. It is the story of a young student who is in class, falls asleep and when he wakes up time seems to stand still actually around him. What is going on? My guesses are he was dreaming, he had died or it was something biblical even going on. Wait until the final scenes and you will find the solution and I was correct indeed (no surprise obviously), but I won't tell you with which of these theories. All in all, the execution was pretty good here I'd say and I enjoyed watching this one. I am not too familiar with Cerdà's other stuff, but I see some nice vision here and an uncompromising approach to difficult plots and premises. The execution was impressive at times and I think this is among the best the year has to offer in short films. I think I have seen some of his other stuff (Cerda's), 1 or 2 other short films only, but that did not impress me too much as this one here did. I highly recommend checking it out. The music and atmosphere are memorable too. Highly recommended and I am also glad they did not stretch this past the 10-minute mark. Very essential film at its core, very convincing and most big name directors (Scorsese etc.) can only dream of starting their careers with a rookie effort as excellent as this one we got here. Also the title is interesting as we understand that in the filmmakers' minds what happens to the protagonist in fact has him enter reality finally with everybody else still being stuck in fiction and the female approaching him in his situation makes it look as if there is no need to be sad or depressed, not as the character, not as a viewer, as this one here brings salvation and happiness to him. See it, you won't need subtitles either as there is no dialogue included here or at least none you need to understand to understand the film.
Review of The Awakening
