A Wild Kindness
2025 · 23m · USA
Directed by Mattias Evangelista
Genres: documentary, experimental
Tones: absurdist, contemplative, melancholic, tender
In late summer on secluded Lummi Island off the Washington coast, a young man named Wymon encounters an older woodworker named Al, his apprentice Zack, and Al's wife of over 40 years, Lindy. What begins as a casual conversation about art and craft evolves into a deeper exploration of love, relationships, and fate.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Hybrid doc with a scripted character meeting real subjects on a Pacific Northwest island — 23 minutes of contemplative woodworker wisdom is exactly the runtime I dread. There's No End comp is doing all the work.
Evangelista's hybrid-documentary device of a scripted stand-in discovering real subjects through outlined-but-unscripted encounters is a methodologically interesting gesture in the lineage of Robert Greene's Kate Plays Christine. The 23-minute runtime suggests appropriate room.
23:50 hybrid doc using a scripted character as audience stand-in encountering real subjects in outlined-but-unscripted scenes — that's a tricky form that risks artifice in both directions. Only 2,172 views and 28 likes is modest, and without being able to see the cut I'm cautious on whether the seam shows.
Reviews
A Wild Kindness is a short film well-fitted to its Pacific Northwest setting. It is earnest, but slightly quirky; naturally beautiful, but not without artifice or self-consciousness. More than anything, it is, befitting its title, very sweet.
Viewers will applaud the audacity to tell a fairly common profile doc story that is elevated and sustained entirely by affection and filmmaking guile.
Festivals
- Raindance Film Festival 2025
- Brooklyn Film Festival 2025