Long Time Listener, First Time Caller
2019 · 17m · USA
Directed by Nora Kirkpatrick
Genres: dark comedy, drama, fantasy
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic, whimsical
A sexually repressed housewife in a small desert town accidentally tunes into a mysterious late-night radio show. When she works up the courage to call in, the host's existential questions push her to reevaluate her marriage and her purpose.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Kirkpatrick does the impossible—she makes the housewife's awakening feel genuinely strange and unsettling rather than inspirational, which is the only way this premise avoids being Hallmark Channel mysticism; the radio host as a voice that asks the right questions without ever appearing on screen is subversive enough to work.
The film's formal restraint—its willingness to let the radio voice remain disembodied, to trust the desert landscape and the woman's face as the entire visual argument—situates itself squarely in a lineage of psychological realism that respects the audience's intelligence.
The choice to never show the radio host, to build the entire emotional arc on Kirkpatrick's performance of listening and the specific cadence of a stranger's voice, is the decision that transforms what could have been melodrama into something genuinely haunting and alive.
Reviews
Magical realism in the strongest and most spell-binding tradition — an exceptionally beautiful film, visually and emotionally.
Breeda Wool delivers a moving performance, with the protagonist's home transformed into a kind of emotional cage.
Festivals
- Palm Springs International ShortFest 2019
- San Diego International Film Festival 2019, Best Short Film
- Femme Filmmakers Festival 2020, Grand Jury Prize
- Prague International Film Festival 2020, Best Female Director
- Sioux City International Film Festival 2019, Best Short Film