RICKY
2023 · 18m · USA
Directed by Rashad Frett
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Newly released after being incarcerated since adolescence, thirty-year-old Ricky navigates the overwhelming task of building an adult life for the first time, taking a job from his neighbor as he attempts to claim his freedom. The film is a coming-of-age story about a man who was never allowed to come of age.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Frett's understanding of incarceration as developmental theft — the film insists Ricky is, in every meaningful sense, the teenager he was when the state took him — is a moral and formal insight worthy of the best short fiction.
Twenty minutes. Cary Fukunaga executive producing, Spike Lee Production Fund, became a feature for April 2026. Thirty-year-old ex-offender as coming-of-age subject. The arrested-development framing is the right read on the subject. Frett is operating at festival-feature level.
A coming-of-age story about a 30-year-old who was never allowed to come of age — Cary Fukunaga and Spike Lee fund backing, feature version premiering in 2026. That gap between chronological age and arrested development is a precise structural choice.
Reviews
Incredibly executed, tense and incisive.
Festivals
- Sundance Film Festival 2023
- Woodstock Film Festival 2023, Best Short Film (Mark Braunstein Award)
- Montclair Film Festival 2023, Jury Award for Fiction Short Film
- First Run Film Festival 2023, King Wasserman Award (1st Prize)