Sunday Dinner
2020 · 20m · USA
Directed by Kevin Mead
After the recent death of their parents, a passionate Italian-American family reunites for their customary Sunday dinner, but tensions rise when one brother confesses a secret that threatens their beloved tradition.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone's going to praise this for being a gentle family dramedy about grief, which is exactly why it's boring—the vegan confession is just a MacGuffin for the real story, and Mead knows it, so why doesn't he lean into the actual subversive tension of dietary apostasy in a tradition-bound family?
Mead situates this firmly in the lineage of Cassavetes-inflected ensemble family films, and the formal restraint—letting silences and table dynamics do the emotional work—shows a filmmaker aware of his tradition and disciplined enough not to oversell the pathos.
The singular choice here is trusting the dinner table itself as the emotional anchor: every cut, every beat of dialogue, every pass of the bread happens in that one room, and Mead never cheats the geography, which transforms what could be schmaltzy into something genuinely bruising.
Reviews
It is great to see a short film perform well on all sides of the camera.
Festivals
- Brooklyn Film Festival 2020
- RiverRun International Film Festival 2020
- Cleveland International Film Festival 2020
- Rhode Island International Film Festival 2020