Minnows
2023 · 38m · USA
Directed by James Mills
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A reclusive housekeeper who can't speak up and a chatty immigrant fisherman who can't shut up discover unexpected kinship through their shared loneliness and love of the ocean.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A quiet drama about two lonely people finding comfort—it's the kind of sincere, tender premise that usually puts me to sleep, but Mills is smart enough to let the actual awkwardness of real connection breathe instead of prettifying it.
The film sits firmly in the neo-realist tradition, though it lacks the formal precision and visual syntax that would elevate it beyond competent regionalism; a well-intentioned study of isolation that doesn't quite interrogate its own aesthetic choices.
Casting Bell—a non-professional whose actual shyness and life become the character itself—is the decision that makes this work; it transforms what could've been precious indie romance into something genuinely unguarded, where every hesitation reads as truth.
Festivals
- Rhode Island International Film Festival 2023, North American Best Editing