When The Skies Are Blue
2025 · 2m
Directed by Matthew Lei
Genres: adventure, coming-of-age, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, surreal, whimsical
A young artist and a child traverse the crystal rain apocalypse in search of… art supplies? "kaylie" - stacy sterling "taylor" - emily lane lindsey pollard's film workshop reni park, jackie manke, ignacio anacona, kabir kukathoas, stella lukmas, felony chen, jason stephen, daixuan yuan, yuhan feng,
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise wants to be weird—crystal rain apocalypse, art supplies as MacGuffin—but it plays it safe, landing somewhere between whimsy and afterschool-special sentiment instead of actually committing to the strangeness it's flirting with.
A formally considered piece that understands the lineage of children-in-fantastical-worlds storytelling; the surreal production design speaks to a clear visual language, though it reads more as stylistic exercise than earned narrative argument.
Two minutes isn't much room, but the decision to make the destination literal (art supplies in an apocalypse) rather than metaphorical—and to lean into that absurdist specificity—is what keeps this from dissolving into generic indie whimsy; that commitment to the odd detail is what works.