Standby
2016 · 6m · GB
Directed by Charlotte Regan
Tones: darkly comic, tender, whimsical
Two new police partners spend their days entirely confined to a patrol car, their evolving friendship playing out against a parade of petty criminals filling the back seat.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Regan looked at a police car interior and saw a two-hander stage play waiting to happen — six minutes, one location, and she builds a friendship that feels lived-in from the first frame.
Charlotte Regan before she was Charlotte Regan, two cops in a car, six minutes — yes. Constraint, chemistry, no posturing; this is the rare "single location" short where the location is the point and not the excuse.
Regan builds an entire relationship arc inside a patrol car, using the constraint as the structure — the kind of compressed character work that announces a real filmmaker. Charlotte Regan would later make Scrapper; the lineage is clear.
Festivals
- Toronto International Film Festival 2016
- Sundance Film Festival 2017, Sundance Ignite Award