Waiting for Vera

The scouts

The premise—hope without sentimentality in wartime—sounds like every well-intentioned festival circuit bore, but if Whipple actually *resists* the urge to look away or manufacture catharsis, this could be genuinely unsettling in a way that matters.

A 15-minute essay film that locates itself in the lineage of contemplative documentary and personal testimony, *Waiting for Vera* demonstrates the formal discipline required to hold hope and rupture in the same frame without collapsing into either propaganda or despair.

Shot in June 2024 during active conflict—that temporal specificity is the anchor—and the real craft will be in how Whipple threads whimsy through that weight; one misplaced tonal choice and the whole thing splinters, but the commitment to find levity without denial suggests he knows exactly where the knife goes.