Rips
2022 · 12m · USA
Directed by Major Dorfman
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, provocative, tender, theatrical
A young working-class mother brings her nine-year-old daughter along while cleaning a wealthy family's home, where an encounter with the teenage daughter of the house over a hand-me-down sweatshirt becomes a quiet, defining reckoning with class and identity.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Nine-year-old realizes her favorite sweatshirt is the rich girl's hand-me-down — clean, contained, class-aware without speeches. That's how this kind of story should work.
A wordless single-garment exchange between rich and poor girls — Dorfman trusts the audience to read class through fabric, which is the discipline this kind of material demands. Quiet and precise.
Twelve minutes turning a single sweatshirt — a hand-me-down from a rich girl to a poor one — into a wordless symbol of class divide seen entirely through a nine-year-old's eyes. That single-object focal point is exactly the kind of compression short film does best when the writing trusts it.
Reviews
Simple, yet effective, the film possesses an undeniable authenticity.
Performance-driven rather than plot-heavy, the film relies on the palpable bond between its two leads.
Festivals
- Woods Hole Film Festival 2023, Jury Award for Best Dramatic Short
- Columbia University Film Festival 2022, Jury Honors
- New Hampshire Film Festival 2023
- Woodstock Film Festival 2023
- Fargo Film Festival 2023