Child Star
2024 · 11m · Indonesia
Directed by Roger Noel Austin Lee
Tones: melancholic, tense
A mother with a misguided understanding of love prevents her young son — a rising child actor — from playing outside, and must stop him again when he tries to sneak away.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the smothering-parent story to land as tragedy, but Austin Lee threads the needle where it becomes something weirder—the mother's control is *also* her investment, her brand extension, and the film doesn't flinch from that moral murk most coming-of-age shorts would sand down.
A formally composed study in domestic entrapment that inherits from the psychological dramas of the Dardenne brothers and contemporary family cinema; the spatial constraint—the mother repeatedly pulling the boy back—becomes a visual language for love as a cage.
The genius is that single decision to make the boy a working actor, which reframes every act of control as simultaneously plausible and monstrous; it's the conceptual hinge that transforms a familiar scenario into something that justifies its own ten minutes.
Festivals
- CinemaSHORT Asian Short Film Competition 2024