Title: Nowhere to Go
MPAA Rating: NA
Director: Julie Pacino
Starring: Alexis Rosinsky & Kyle Kaminsky
Runtime: 17 minutes, 57 seconds
What It Is: Julie Pacino’s short film centers around two young suicidal people who encounter one another in the proverbial middle of nowhere (in this case, a vast, grassy plain). They experience a renewed sense of hope after thwarting one another’s suicide attempts and forge a connection through sharing their mental health struggles.

What We Think: The short’s plot hinges around a promising premise, and some of the dialogue provides valuable insight into the experiences of someone struggling with depression. Screenwriter Sheri Sussman focuses largely on the characters’ feelings of hopelessness and guilt.”I know people have it worse,” the film’s unnamed young woman (Alexis Rosinsky) murmurs; later on in the discussion, the unnamed young man (Kyle Kaminsky) laments feeling sad “when you have nothing tangible to complain about.” Such exchanges are striking, but the dialogue can also veer into the cliche; their first in-depth exchange, in particular, reads like an especially bad episode of 13 Reasons Why. The film’s audio is also notably experimental; small sounds, like that of a boot crushing a bug, are amplified, while the audio also cuts out entirely in some parts. Pacino seems interested in both sound and silence and incorporates their use in ways that dovetail nicely with the film’s central themes. We are shown the characters’ eventual achievement of a sense of peace; the change, however, comes across as abrupt and underdeveloped.

Our Grade: C+. This is a short film with a degree of promise. In fact, I am assured that there is a good movie in here. All the filmmakers need to do now is trim off the fat of arthouse cliches.