KWC Film Fest In Review: Unfulfilled

Synopsis: In Unfulfilled a young writer called Ava must face her fear and bias, and her most disturbing demons.

Review: This is the first of our reviews from the scifipulse award category from the KWC Film Fest. Unfulfilled, which was written and directed by Rodney Kimbang was one of the two runners up for our award.

The Story

When Ava has a nasty fall from her bicycle she has a near-death experience in which her fictional characters and personal demons seek to haunt her. While running fearfully through a dreamlike woodland. Ava is tormented by a man and a woman who seek to make her touch base with her unfulfilled potential as a writer. They chastise Ava for giving up on her play and seek to make her get out of her own way.

The Acting

Joy Maki Detore does a solid job of portraying the young writer Ava Jill. Her attitude of prejudgment towards her pursuers is delivered with just the right combination of flippancy and venom. She is kind of like an Alice character that has gone through an edgier looking glass. Andrew Fox Follin is just the right combination of calmness and menace as the unfulfilled male aspect of Ava’s subconsciousness. He is the first character Ava meets. More menacing and perhaps a bit less kind is Lea Beckmann as the female aspect of Ava’s ego.

Overall. The acting in this short was fairly solid, but I could not help but feel that there was a little more exploration to be done. In that, the film felt a little short at its 10 minutes run time. Subsequently, had the movie had a little more time. The actors may have had a bit more time with their roles.

Overall

Unfulfilled is a great short movie, which felt a little too short, which I suspect was more to do with the lack of a budget than it was to do with creativity. The cinematography is really solid. The visual style really stood out and added a lot to the film. In particular, I loved the dreamlike haze that the director managed to achieve during the dream sequence. It had a real fairytale quality.

Director Rodney Kimbangu did some great work here. I hope that he is able to get a bit more of a budget at some stage so that he can put a longer version of this film together because I’d love to see it.