When You Left Me On That Boulevard
2023 · 13m · USA
Directed by Kayla Abuda Galang
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Teenager Ly and her cousins get high before joining a boisterous extended-family Thanksgiving at their auntie's house in Paradise Hills, southeast San Diego, in 2006. A warm, nostalgic slice of Filipino-American community life told through karaoke, romance, and weed.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Filipino-American teenage cousins getting high before Thanksgiving in Paradise Hills, bilingual without subtitles, cast from actual neighbors — Sundance Grand Jury Prize and earned. In.
Kayla Abuda Galang at the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for an unsubtitled bilingual Filipino-American Thanksgiving shot in her aunt's actual home — this is autobiographical specificity as method, and it works. Among the best.
Thirteen minutes of bilingual Tagalog/English dialogue without subtitles, shot in the director's actual aunt's home with a cast drawn from childhood friends and real Paradise Hills residents — that's authenticity baked into the production model, not performed. Sundance Short Film Grand Jury Prize and SXSW Special Jury Award for Vision confirm.
Reviews
What struck me most about When You Left Me on That Boulevard was just how authentic it all felt... full of nostalgia, humor, and warm feelings.
From the first frame, Kayla Abuda Galang envelops the viewer into a mid-2000’s dreamscape that acts as a blooming snapshot into a family’s life.
Festivals
- Sundance Film Festival 2023, Short Film Grand Jury Prize
- SXSW Film Festival 2023, Special Jury Award for Vision
- San Diego Asian Film Festival 2023, Grand Jury Prize
- San Diego Filipino Film Festival 2023, Jury Award for Best Short Narrative