From the sky
2014 · 18m · Estados Unidos
Directed by Ian Ebright
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
A humble father and his troubled son struggle to cope with the effects of drones in the Middle East. Their lives are shaped by the threat from above.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The premise feels sincere in a way that makes me suspicious—domestic anxiety about drone strikes is exactly the kind of thing that gets made earnestly but never provokes, just sits there radiating concern without questioning its own framing.
Ebright constructs a formal meditation on invisible threat and domestic rupture that locates itself squarely in the lineage of American realist family drama confronting geopolitical consequence; the restraint is deliberate, the melancholy architecturally sound.
The film's power lives in its refusal to show the sky directly—holding us in the father and son's terrestrial anxiety, grounded in performance and spatial tension rather than spectacle, which is the smartest choice a modest budget could make here.