Ro & the Stardust
2022 · 16m · USA
Directed by Eunice Levis
Genres: drama, fantasy, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A free-spirited Dominican-American teen secretly helps her terminally ill grandmother build a rocket ship to fulfill her dying wish of being launched into outer space. A bilingual urban fantasy about being seen, second chances, and acceptance across three generations of women.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects sci-fi to happen in space; Levis plants it in a Bronx kitchen and somehow that's more radical than any dystopia—the real subversion is making the impossible feel like Sunday dinner with your abuela.
The bilingual layering operates as formal constraint rather than decoration, each language shift a deliberate cut that deepens the intimacy; Levis situates herself in a lineage of magical-realist cinema while refusing its sentimentality.
The choice to keep the camera close during the rocket-building sequences—treating the magical as mundane carpentry—transforms a thin premise into something that earns its tenderness through a single sustained decision about scale and framing.
Reviews
One of the sweetest and most touching shorts, with a potent emotional wallop carried by the lead performances.
An awkward blend of family drama and science-fiction elements — the sci-fi setting feels unnecessary to a story that could have worked just as well set on Earth.
Festivals
- NALIP Latino Lens Women of Color Short Film Incubator 2021