The Lake in the Sky
2024 · 17m · USA
Directed by Caleb Reese Paul
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
On his 16th birthday, an isolated, grieving teenager named Warren uses a homemade celluloid-based machine to revisit memories of his late father, then meets a girl at a lake who tries to use the device to alter her own painful past.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A 15-year-old made a sci-fi meditation on grief that somehow avoids both the mawkish and the gimmicky—the 16mm machine conceit could've been insufferable, but Paul uses celluloid as actual *texture* instead of metaphor, which is the opposite move everyone else would make.
Paul positions himself within a lineage of experimental cinema and Nouvelle Vague sensibility—the formal restraint, the visual economy, the refusal to sentimentalize—while the film's structural argument about memory and film stock itself demonstrates considerable curatorial sophistication for a debut.
The masterstroke is the decision to shoot the memory sequences on degraded, physically manipulated 16mm while keeping the present-day lake scenes clean and digital: one micro-production choice that does the entire thematic work, and a teenager figured it out without money or crew.
Reviews
Teenage filmmaker Caleb Reese Paul has made something quite extraordinary with the riveting The Lake in the Sky.
The cinematography and effects [were amazing], and Caleb Reese Paul's direction makes him a rising star.
Festivals
- Cleveland International Film Festival 2024
- Chicago International Film Festival 2024
- Indie Memphis Film Festival 2024
- Asheville Film Festival 2024
- Rhode Island International Film Festival 2024, Audience Choice Award
- Chelsea Film Festival 2024
- HollyShorts London 2024