Sales Per Hour
2020 · 7m · USA
Directed by Daniel Jaffe, Michelle Uranowitz
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
A sales associate at a high-end New York City fashion boutique overhears what she believes is a nonconsensual encounter in a dressing room, and must grapple with guilt, uncertainty, and the professional risks of speaking up.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Seven minutes of dressing-room ambiguity and bystander paralysis — admirable restraint. The danger is it stays tasteful when the subject demands the opposite; the runtime gives me hope it doesn't.
Uranowitz building from her own retail experience, with the entire seven minutes hinging on a single overheard dressing-room moment — this is the Kitty Genovese problem dramatized as workplace paralysis. Compact, ethically alert, exactly the scale for the question.
Co-director Uranowitz draws on her actual retail experience and stars in it, and the entire 7-minute film is built from one overheard moment — that's a tight structural bet where the audience has to share the paralysis or the film collapses. 41K views suggests the bet pays.
Reviews
Naturalism is the name of the game here, from spontaneous and nuanced acting performances to perfectly frenzied camera movements.
The film builds tension masterfully from a single overheard moment, leaving the viewer as paralyzed as its protagonist. 9 out of 10.
Festivals
- SXSW Film Festival 2021
- AFI Fest 2021
- Palm Springs International ShortFest 2021
- Nashville Film Festival 2021
- Atlanta Film Festival 2021
- New Orleans Film Festival 2021
- Salute Your Shorts Film Festival 2021