Child Runaways
2022 · 13m · USA
Directed by Adriane McCray
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Three sisters left alone for the weekend discover a family secret that threatens to change their lives, finding magic in the mundane as they navigate childhood together.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Three Black sisters left alone with a family secret, kaleidoscopic cinematography — sounds like an MFA prestige reel but the specificity of perspective is at least real. Could go either way.
McCray treats Black girlhood's interior wonder through kaleidoscopic photography in the Florida Project / Crooklyn lineage — a sincere subject treated with formal warmth. The unusual element does more than describe; it commits.
Thirteen minutes of kaleidoscopic cinematography turning ordinary domestic spaces into arenas of Black-girlhood wonder, with SXSW (Austin Film Society) and Short of the Week credits — that's institutional validation of the camera language specifically. Lauren Guiteras's DP work sounds like the heart of it.
Reviews
Child Runaways defies its rather unremarkable plot description through its thoroughly realised characters and a tonal balance that together add up to an affectionately sympathetic portrait of a family unit on the verge of breaking down.
The three performances by Ariel Trent, Evelyn Grace Williams and Jai Shannon are so genuine that you soon forget that they are not in fact real sisters but actors delivering scripted lines.
Festivals
- SXSW Film Festival 2022
- Oakcliff Film Festival
- San Francisco Black Film Festival