The Way Home
2018 · 4m
Directed by Ben O'Sullivan
Tones: melancholic, mythic, tender
In a dying world, a rugged father figure desperately seeks to retrieve someone he treasures, testing what 'I would die for you' really means.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's competent mythic sci-fi, sure, but the 'father would die for child' premise is so well-trodden it barely registers—even in a dying world, there's nothing here that makes you reconsider what that sacrifice actually means, just confirms it.
O'Sullivan constructs this as pure cinema: the mythic scaffolding (rugged protector, post-apocalyptic landscape, the unspeakable loss) serves a formal precision that recalls both Tarkovsky's visual patience and the compressed emotional grammar of contemporary festival drama—every frame earns its melancholy.
The sound design is what pivots this from conventional premise into something haunting—there's a specific moment where the ambient wash drops and you hear only breath and footstep, and suddenly the desperation becomes tactile in a way the script alone never could.
Reviews
In a dying world what will matter most? It's a question that forces you almost immediately to pause and determine for yourself, "what does matters most?"
The character we follow is a ruggard father figure who looks desperate to retrieve something or someone he treasures. Essentially, I wanted to explore the idea of a father's unconditional love for his children and challenge the words we often speak haphazardly, 'I would die for you'.