Caroline
2016 · 12m · United States
Directed by Kristen Kee
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
After their mother's death, Caroline claims only one inheritance: the old rotary phone she believes she can use to call her mother one last time.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The rotary phone-as-séance device is exactly the kind of whimsical magical realism that usually makes me roll my eyes, but Kee commits to the melancholy so hard she pulls you past the sentiment trap—it's grief as stubborn illogic, which is actually radical.
A formally restrained meditation on mourning that understands the grammar of objects; the rotary phone as both literal prop and emotional throughline sits comfortably in a lineage of Chiang Tze-Ming and Kelly Reichardt—quiet, accumulative, asking the viewer to sit with absence.
The entire film hinges on one decision: to keep the camera patient and still during Caroline's waiting, letting the hum of the phone become the sound design's whole language—that restraint transforms a premise that could've been maudlin into something genuinely haunting.
Festivals
- Aspen ShortsFest 2016, Audience Award
- Student Academy Awards 2016, Gold Medal