Diana Cam Van Nguyen

Apart

short film project
Logline: Even young people have to face the death. Sometimes...
Description: This anidoc brings confessions of three friends who share the same experience - they lost one of parents while being teenagers.
The film explores the before and after their parents died. It tells about their inner fights, their courage, their coming to peace. It portraits young people who are forced to become adults too soon.
The film combines voice-over confessions with live-action scenes and hand-painted animation. This combination allows us to better express feelings and thoughts of the protagonists. Visual side of the film builds upon the intensity and colours of various emotions.
Director´s statement: Me as a good friend of all the protagonists, I can see the connection between them. They don’t know each other but even as young people they share the same sad experience. Just within last few years I saw a lot of losses like this around me and I think that people hardly realize that even young people must face the death sometimes. Barbora saw the car accident of her dad. Petr lost his mother when she committed a suicide by poisoning herself with gas. Ondrej waited for his father’s death for one year since the moment he had been diagnosed a tumour. Their stories and confessions show me how strong and brave they are. How fast they had to grow up and become adults. I would like to pass to the audience experiences of my friends along with my respect to them. Our aim is not just to tell about the death of their parents but our film should primarily touch the absurdity of meeting the death despite being so young. This hybrid genre - animated documentary has many advantages. I learned that anidoc is a good form to search for our own past, for expressing subjective pointples of view and it has a big emotional strength.