Deliberate
2024 · 14m · USA
Directed by Marta Roncada
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, provocative, tense
A young woman returns to her old high school to confront the favorite teacher who blurred lines with her when she was 18, only to find his self-justifications waiting for her. What looked like romance in the moment now reads as grooming, and neither of them is ready to call it what it was.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Roncada walks right up to the revenge-arc cliff and then *doesn't jump*, which is either cowardly restraint or genuinely subversive—I'm still furious about it, which probably means it worked.
The film's formal architecture—its refusal of catharsis, its maintenance of the power imbalance through the final frame—situates itself deliberately against the confessional melodrama tradition, achieving something more unsettling and architecturally precise.
The decision to let the scene end without resolution, to keep the imbalance intact rather than resolve it through confrontation, is the whole film; everything else serves that one choice, and it's devastatingly effective on a micro budget.
Reviews
A textured and painfully human story... Both actors are compelling and believable, never showy.
A compelling and urgent short film that examines predatory relationships with unflinching honesty... a powerful treatment that will resonate with abuse survivors while calling others to much-needed awareness.
Festivals
- Waco Independent Film Festival 2024, Best Drama Short
- El Dorado Film Festival 2025, Best of Fest
- Dances With Films 2024
- NoHo CineFest 2024