A starry-eyed actress with a troubled past faces her harshest critic during an interview gone wrong.A starry-eyed actress with a troubled past faces her harshest critic during an interview gone wrong.A starry-eyed actress with a troubled past faces her harshest critic during an interview gone wrong.
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- 13 wins & 13 nominations
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- TriviaNamed among the five winners of Amazon Studios' inaugural All Voices Film Festival hosted on Amazon Prime Video, celebrating filmmakers from underrepresented backgrounds.
Featured review
Unique and Brilliant!
THE CRITIC is a completely flawless and realistic short psychological drama written and directed by Stella Velon, who also stars in it. This film is simply outstanding and deserves all the critical acclaim it has earned. It truly demonstrates her enormous talent as an artist. The film judiciously utilizes its whole runtime of 15 minutes to take us on a thrilling insightful ride into the mind of the protagonist.
The story revolves around the compelling mental conflict of an award winning actress (Stella Velon) as she cross questions and doubts her own success and self-worth. Her strong inner critic is very intelligently personified as a physical interviewer (Alan Smyth) asking her harsh questions directed at her personality and her past, on the night of her award ceremony.
As she is continuously pressurized and stressed to an emotional breaking point, she helplessly feels kind of trapped by her own mind's judgement which she can't seem to get rid off. Her frivolous attempts at overcoming it only spiral her down into melancholic days of overwhelming anxiety, depression and addiction. But, much like most of us suffering similarly, she tries to hide it in herself to conceal from the outside world.
Thus, we as the audience are reminded of the consequences to overly criticizing ourselves, even in the face of our exceptional achievements.
Stella Velon's amazing performance adds icing to the cake. She delivers every line of dialogue so perfectly that it's enough to make us enter into the head of the character and feel the way the story wants us to. The score carries us away into the film as it intensifies right at the climax, making us figuratively live through the experience. We never truly see the face of her interviewer, but this deliberate cinematographic choice creates a stronger impact. The timely camera movements like push-ins and frame sizes are used so cleverly that it creates a profound cinematic effect on us.
I think that this storyline is surely inspired from Stella Velon's own personal experiences, much like the plot of the film itself. It thus proves the point again that, art is best when written from the heart.
The story revolves around the compelling mental conflict of an award winning actress (Stella Velon) as she cross questions and doubts her own success and self-worth. Her strong inner critic is very intelligently personified as a physical interviewer (Alan Smyth) asking her harsh questions directed at her personality and her past, on the night of her award ceremony.
As she is continuously pressurized and stressed to an emotional breaking point, she helplessly feels kind of trapped by her own mind's judgement which she can't seem to get rid off. Her frivolous attempts at overcoming it only spiral her down into melancholic days of overwhelming anxiety, depression and addiction. But, much like most of us suffering similarly, she tries to hide it in herself to conceal from the outside world.
Thus, we as the audience are reminded of the consequences to overly criticizing ourselves, even in the face of our exceptional achievements.
Stella Velon's amazing performance adds icing to the cake. She delivers every line of dialogue so perfectly that it's enough to make us enter into the head of the character and feel the way the story wants us to. The score carries us away into the film as it intensifies right at the climax, making us figuratively live through the experience. We never truly see the face of her interviewer, but this deliberate cinematographic choice creates a stronger impact. The timely camera movements like push-ins and frame sizes are used so cleverly that it creates a profound cinematic effect on us.
I think that this storyline is surely inspired from Stella Velon's own personal experiences, much like the plot of the film itself. It thus proves the point again that, art is best when written from the heart.
helpful•10
- riddhimanroy
- Sep 2, 2021
Details
- Runtime15 minutes
- Color
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