Influence
2019 · 25m · USA
Directed by Indy Dang
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A 16-year-old private school student struggles with his identity and starts exploring rebellion after his older brother unexpectedly drops out of college and returns home, reshaping the quiet, fraught bond between them.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's competent and introspective, sure, but 'two brothers grapple with identity' is the exact lane everyone expects a sensitive student film to occupy—Dang refuses to subvert the premise, just sits in it, and that restraint reads as caution rather than conviction.
The formal patience here recalls the American indie lineage of Carruth and Reichardt—a thesis film that understands silence as syntax, where the editing breath and compositional stillness become the actual argument about intimacy and fraternal distance.
The decision to let scenes end without resolution, to linger on the brothers' shared discomfort rather than punctuate it, transforms what could've been melodrama into something genuinely bracingly still—that compositional choice, sustained across 25 minutes on a student budget, is what elevates this.
Reviews
An aching, yearning empathy is the brothers' gift to one another -- as well as the story's gift to the audience.
A story told with a remarkable level of emotional engagement, especially for a short.
Festivals
- Rhode Island International Film Festival 2019
- San Jose International Short Film Festival 2019
- Silicon Valley Asian Pacific Film Festival 2019