Through Fire She Calls
2017 · 9m · USA
Directed by Jason Georgiades
Tones: contemplative, mythic, tense
In the late days of WWI, a lone American doughboy sniper, longing for his wife and home, jeopardizes his life to rescue a mysterious P.O.W. who holds a strange key to finding a way back. A nearly dialogue-free black-and-white short that braids trench warfare with quiet science-fictional mystery.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It wants to be a haunted WWI elegy but keeps genuflecting to sci-fi tropes—color flashes, mysterious keys—that feel grafted on rather than genuinely subversive; the restraint is admirable, but the premise never commits hard enough to anything to actually unsettle you.
A formally disciplined meditation on loss and duty that inherits the weight of both war cinema and experimental narrative; the chromatic shifts function as punctuation in a larger composition about memory and sacrifice, and the near-silence demands a viewer attuned to what's *not* said.
The decision to let those color flashes interrupt the monochrome—brief, disorienting, unexplained—is the entire film, and it's where Georgiades trusts the audience enough to do something small and strange with almost nothing; the restraint pays off because he chose where *not* to explain.
Reviews
A gem which scores especially through its atmosphere — the mix of sci-fi and black and white makes it particularly interesting when the recognizable sci-fi parts are shown on screen.
The story is curious, and definitely original. The acting is great, and so are the special effects — the execution here is on a pretty high professional level, plus there is a noticeable tinge of personal style.
Festivals
- Berlin Sci-Fi Filmfest 2017, Best Action Short
- Boston Science Fiction Film Festival 2018, Certificate of Excellence for Best Editing