Sometimes, I Think About Dying
2019 · 12m · USA
Directed by Stefanie Abel Horowitz
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic, tender
Fran, an isolated office worker, drifts through her days entertaining quiet fantasies about her own death until a new coworker tries to court her, forcing her to weigh the awkward possibility of connection against the comfort of disappearing.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Most films about suicidal ideation either weaponize it for pathos or exile it to the margins—Horowitz just *sits* with it, lets it breathe alongside a genuinely awkward office flirtation, and refuses to let either one apologize for existing. It's the kind of tonal tightrope that makes everyone else nervous, which is exactly why it works.
The film's formal restraint—those unadorned office spaces, the patient editing that honors silence—channels a lineage of character-driven minimalism while maintaining a distinctly contemporary brittleness; the way it holds suicidal fantasy and romantic possibility in the same frame without collapsing one into the other feels like rigorous formal thinking.
The entire film hinges on a single sound design choice: the way Horowitz uses *absence* of music and ambient cushioning to make Fran's internal landscape feel less like a performance and more like overhearing someone's actual thoughts, and it's that decision that transforms what could've been precious into something genuinely unsettling and human.
Reviews
Katy Wright-Mead's portrayal of Fran is so pitch-perfect and reflective of my own struggles with communication that I couldn't separate myself entirely.
A frank, funny, and heartbreaking depiction of a woman on the brink of giving up.
Festivals
- Sundance Film Festival 2019
- Aspen Shortsfest 2019, Best Drama
- Palm Springs International ShortFest 2019, Future Filmmaker Award
- Academy Awards 2020, Shortlisted