Off Fairfax
2022 · 7m · USA
Directed by Erica Eng, Rell Battle
Genres: comedy, mystery, thriller
Tones: dark, darkly comic, melancholic, surreal
Quinn Park, still haunted by his Black activist mother's disappearance twenty years earlier, dedicates himself to solving local mysteries in his LA neighborhood. One night, he and his two best friends head to a Fairfax Avenue diner to investigate the murder of a popular musician — a case that unexpectedly sheds light on his mother's fate through a surrealist conspiracy tied to Tupac Shakur's death.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Tupac-conspiracy diner mystery as pilot proof-of-concept with neon-noir aesthetic. The Sorry to Bother You / Atlanta comp is a high bar — at 7 minutes I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.
Eng and Battle deploy Black conspiracy theories — Tupac's death specifically — as comedic vehicle for racial-trauma minimization. The Tribeca Narrative Episodic placement signals the pilot's serial ambition; the Atlanta lineage is appropriate.
Tribeca Narrative Episodic premiere shot in a single day with a neon-diner dreamlike aesthetic — using Tupac conspiracy as a comedic vehicle for racial-trauma erasure is a Sorry to Bother You-tier swing. The 6:30 runtime matched to pilot ambition tells you it's a proof of concept.
Reviews
The comedic delivery plays off of the minimization of the true horrors of our dark American history.
Through its surrealist delivery, our audience is taken on a journey to unravel these 'paranoid theories' which are eventually transformed into actualized fears.
Festivals
- Tribeca Film Festival 2022
- Slamdance Film Festival 2023, Honorable Mention — Best Episodic
- HollyShorts Film Festival 2022
- Hip Hop Film Festival 2022