Fran is thinking about dying, but a man in the office might want to date her.

Stefanie Abel Horowitz's "sometimes, i think about dying" is a short film which premiered at Sundance 2019, and won awards at Aspen and Palm Springs. A masterful exercise in tone, and a refreshingly honest examination of depression and social isolation, the short walks a fine line in examining its protagonist's dark malaise, but also weaving in humor, as Fran must decide whether to open herself up to connection.

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"The film begins with narration by its protagonist Fran: “My world is in a universe, my country is in a world. My state is in a country, my city is in a state…” Fran’s nesting classifications continue to shrink down in scale until she arrives at herself—in a bed, in a room, in a house. Her taxonomical impulse is an attempt to instill order and clarify her place the universe, a place she struggles to understand. Yet the cosmic scale of her ordering reveals her deepest truth about the overall insignificance of that existence. Living is something of a burden to Fran, and she ultimately is ambivalent towards it.

sometimes, i think about dying is masterful exercise in tone, and a refreshingly honest examination of depression and social isolation. Horowitz’s film walks a fine line between the punishingly dark malaise of Fran’s condition and relatable humor. Fran is funny after all, with a quick wit, but her social awkwardness and disparaging inner monologue are debilitating. She floats through life by going through the motions, absent friends or hobbies, until a co-worker takes an interest in her.

Robert (Jim Sarbh) is gentle and sensitive too on first blush, yet with an assuredness that is captivating to Fran. He strikes up gentle flirtations around the office and trades texts that she agonizes over responding to, until he asks her out on a date. Fran is perplexed—what does he see in her? This is a mystery to the viewer as well, and tension is built throughout the film as we fear the potential affect of a clumsy or ill-intentioned remark or deed by Robert upon Fran’s fragile psyche.

Fran is meek, and the film reflects this quality. From the purposeful lack of capitalization of its title that reads like a whisper, to the visual grammar of the cinematography. The shots are languid, full of slow, subtle pushes. Utilizing an ultra-wide aspect, this extra space is often used to isolate Fran, minimizing her presence as she is pushed to the corner of frames.

To the immense credit of Horowitz and Wright-Mead, this meekness is fundamental to Fran’s character and to the arc of the film. It is not disguised as a quirk, there is no vivaciousness hinted at under the surface. Robert is not a hero that swoops in to rescue her from “the blues” and there is no triumphant note to the film where Fran “snaps out of it”. The duo appear to intimately understand depression and the way it is commonly misunderstood. It is not often merely a layer on top of a personality, the metaphorical “dark cloud”, but something deeply ingrained. It is not the dampening of mood, but the negation of it, and Fran, more clearly than any depiction I’ve seen in film exemplifies this.

The film’s fidelity to depicting depression does not mean the film is without catharsis however, in fact it makes the conclusion of the film that much more powerful. Fran is able to finally articulate her fundamental reservations to Robert—why? Why take an interest in worthless me? With this breakthrough she might also be able to finally share that one true thing about herself that she carries throughout the film." — S/W Curator, Jason Sondhi

CREDITS
Directed by: Stefanie Abel Horowitz
Starring: Katy Wright-Mead, Jim Sarbh
Screenplay by: Stefanie Abel Horowitz & Katy Wright-Mead and Kevin Armento
Based on the play killers by: Kevin Armento
Director of Photography: Matthew Pothier
Edited by: Stephanie Kaznocha
Producers: Stefanie Abel Horowitz, Katy Wright-Mead
Executive Producers: Patrick James Lunch, Ryan Gielen
Co-/Line Producer: Jessica Lauren Richmond
Music Composed by: Savannah Wheeler
Sound Design: Michael Capuano
Colorist: Arianna Shining Star Pane
Visual Effects: Jane Parisi
Visual Effects: Navid Sanati
Assistant Director: Craig Newman
Gaffer: Adam Belanger
Assistant Camera: Ant Wheeler
Production Sound: David Beede
Grip: Benjamin Moniz
Script Supervisor: Emma Yarbrough
DIT: Caitlin Reeves
Hair & Makeup: Agustina Sosa
Production Design: Pete Hansen
Wardrobe: Annie Gamber
Production Coordinator: Cody Dugan
Production Assistant: Jarrod Lynch Anderson
Locations Manager: Andrew Simon
Intuitive Cook: Isaac Fosl-Van Wyke

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Reproduced on this channel with the permission of the filmmakers