Shannon Amen
2019 · 14m · Canada
Directed by Chris Dainty
Genres: drama, essay film, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A young woman struggles to reconcile her sexual identity with religious faith while overwhelmed by guilt and anxiety. Assembled from her passionate, pained expressions, the film becomes an elegy for a friend lost to suicide.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects the confessional essay film about faith and queerness to genuflect toward catharsis or even resolution—Dainty refuses, letting the contradiction just *sit* there, which is braver and weirder than the premise suggests.
A formally rigorous assembly of performance and silence that positions itself squarely in the lineage of essay cinema and structural portraiture; the restraint of the edit becomes the real argument about grace, guilt, and memory.
The decision to build an entire film from facial expression—close, unsentimental, refusing the save—means every micromovement of doubt across her face becomes the whole emotional architecture, which is devastatingly economical.