The Family Circus
2023 · 18m · USA
Directed by Andrew Fitzgerald
Genres: crime, dark comedy, drama, thriller
Tones: darkly comic, humorous, tense
On Christmas Eve, a Vietnamese-American family scrambles to cover up a drunk driving accident when the youngest son crashes the car and flees. As the eldest son offers to take the blame and a cop accompanies them home, their plan begins to unravel under the pressure of family dynamics and long-buried emotional baggage.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Vietnamese-American family Christmas Eve drunk-driving cover-up with Michael Ironside as the cop — that casting is a left turn I respect. Real comedic mileage in the premise.
Andrew Fitzgerald simulates Pennsylvania snow in LA and ships his own family's Christmas ornaments to dress the set — autobiographical specificity inside a cover-up thriller frame, with Michael Ironside as the cop. Promising mix.
Eighteen minutes shot entirely in LA but set in snowy Pennsylvania, with the director shipping his own family's Christmas ornaments and photos from home to dress the set — that biographical-prop layer is exactly the kind of personal specificity that After Hours-style escalating chaos benefits from. Michael Ironside in the cast is a great cop-energy choice.
Reviews
Magnifying tension at every turn but never sacrificing the constant cool factor... makes you want to watch more shorts or make one of your own; it's just that cool.
Fitzgerald uses the pressures of the season, ethnicity, and morality to craft a surprisingly effective short thriller, with Michael Ironside's casting amplifying unsettling subtext as a physically imposing cop.
Festivals
- Sundance Film Festival 2023
- SXSW Film Festival 2023
- Aspen ShortsFest 2023
- Palm Springs International ShortFest 2023