Going Home
2020 · 9m · New Zealand
Directed by Ashley Williams
Genres: biography, coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A decade after her uncle's death, Ashley Williams honours his adventurous spirit by learning to fly.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A tender memorial disguised as coming-of-age—Williams plays it straight when the real move would've been to interrogate why we mythologize the dead through their unfinished dreams instead of our own.
The formal restraint here recalls the essay-film tradition of autobiography; a measured meditation on inheritance that trusts the viewer to sit with absence rather than resolve it.
The precision of learning to fly as the literal vessel for processing grief—that single metaphorical commitment, sustained across nine minutes without winking, is what transforms a personal documentary into something genuinely moving.