Title: Broken Bird
MPAA Rating: Not Yet Rated
Director: Rachael Harrison Gordon
Starring: Indigo Hubbard-Salk, Chad L. Coleman, Mel House
Runtime: 10 mins

What It Is: A teen girl in New Jersey tries to find her identity as the biracial daughter of a divorced couple, one Jewish and one gentile.

What We Think: This film handles itself well, both in how it portrays its subjects and how nice it is to look at it. The film is about very the personal experiences someone born between two worlds faces and does a very good job of going into those experiences in a natural but straight-to-the-point manner without rushing or dragging along the way. The acting in the film is all-around good, but Indigo Hubbard-Salk and Chad L. Coleman really shine in their respective roles, Hubbard-Salk as the main character Birdie and Coleman as her father. I just have to mention how much I enjoyed their chemistry together… even though their scene together is short, their relationship as father and daughter felt real enough to leave an impact. Now moving on to how technically well done the film is, I loved Broken Bird for that too. There are a lot of well executed and interesting decisions in terms of cinematography, looking gorgeous without taking you out of the moment. With all these elements described above together, the short goes down like a quick but warm meal.

Our Grade: A, Broken Birds has a good core, a real-life story that was expanded and executed nicely into something that’s engrossing and accessible to watch as a successful thought piece. Even if you don’t happen to have had an experience very similar to the movie (I happen to), you can still connect to the feeling of being a teenager trying to figure out some identity to hold on to as you start growing up. Even as an adult it’s likely you can’t help but connect to the search for identity, which makes you feel happy and like yourself. Overall – I felt that this was a short I could’ve watched as a full-length film, and gladly still would.