Eulogies
2023 · 11m · USA
Directed by Steve Parys
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic, tender
In the bathroom of a funeral home, three young men frantically try to help a fourth find the right words to deliver the eulogy for their friend. A tender, bittersweet portrait of grief, friendship, and the impossible task of summing up a life.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a funeral-home bathroom comedy about male vulnerability—which sounds like a Hallmark card until you realize Parys actually commits to the awkwardness and lets the joke be on grief itself, not the mourners. Refreshingly unsentimental about sentimentality.
Parys treats the bathroom confessional as a deliberate formal constraint, channeling the tradition of chamber drama while resisting melodrama; the real lineage here is Cassavetes-adjacent intimacy, where the cramped mise-en-scène becomes the argument.
The decision to play the entire eulogy-writing process in real time—no montage, no escape—means every fumble and silence lands with weight; that single constraint transforms four actors in a bathroom into something that feels both claustrophobic and emotionally necessary.
Reviews
What to Say at a Funeral
Compassionate, sweet, gentle, sad, and funny — Parys knew Eulogies had to be his next project.
Festivals
- Three Rivers Film Festival (Pittsburgh Shorts) 2023