Memory Project
2024 · 22m · USA
Directed by Timothy Parsons
Genres: drama, historical, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
Volunteer subjects arrive at Yale University in 1961 for what they're told is a study on memory and learning. As a soft-spoken researcher's instructions escalate, the participants are forced to confront how far ordinary people will go when an authority figure asks them to harm a stranger.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone's going to call this 'important' and 'necessary,' which is exactly why it's risky—but Parsons actually earns the restaging by making the experiment itself the formal problem, not the moral lesson, which is weirder and more unsettling than the obvious read.
A scrupulous dramatization of Milgram that positions itself squarely in the lineage of ethical docudrama and social experiment cinema, with the rigor to let the procedure's choreography become its own argument—the real craft is in the restraint.
The decision to play it in near real-time, letting the escalation breathe across the full 21 minutes instead of cutting for momentum, transforms what could've been a message-movie into something that actually replicates the subjects' experience of incremental moral compromise.
Festivals
- DC Independent Film Festival 2025, Best Narrative Short
- Fredericksburg Film Festival 2025, Grand Jury Prize & Audience Choice
- The NOVA FEST 2025, Best Thriller; Best Actor (Josh Tyson)
- Chesapeake Film Festival 2025, Best Short Film
- Gaithersburg Film Festival 2025, Best Short Film
- Awesome Con Short Film Fest 2025, Best in Show
- Richmond International Film Festival 2025