Meantime
2022 · 18m · USA
Directed by Michael T Workman
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
After his father Tim suffers a work-related stroke and begins showing signs of memory loss, filmmaker Michael Workman returns home to rural Montana for an intimate reckoning with trauma, dyslexia, addiction, and systemic neglect.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The film's austere visual grammar — Workman turning his own camera on his own guilt — situates it in a rigorous tradition of first-person documentary that neither sentimentalizes its subjects nor protects itself behind the apparatus of craft.
Son filming dyslexic father after stroke in rural Montana — the camera as filial guilt. Palm Springs Staff Pick. The runtime suggests this earns its weight.
Palm Springs ShortFest 2022 Staff Pick — Workman as son, cinematographer, AND subject collapsing the documentary distance entirely. Eighteen minutes of guilt that's inseparable from the gaze.
Festivals
- Telluride Mountainfilm 2022, Best Short Film
- Palm Springs ShortFest 2022, Vimeo Staff Pick Award