Eli, Briefly | Celine Sutter

Eli, Briefly // Short Film // 2023

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Written, directed, and edited by Celine Sutter

Official Selection Nitehawk Shorts Festival, 2024

Winner of the Future of Film is Female Award, 2024

Logline

A young, newly successful actor Eli loses their keys after blacking out at their friend Gray's birthday party. Told in an invasive time structure, the film follows Eli the next day as they visit people from their past in order to get a spare set while piecing together what happened the night before. Through the process of reckoning with Gray and seeing their mother, Eli is forced to face their past self, and confront their self-destructive behavior towards the people closest to them.

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Director's Statement

For "Eli, Briefly" I was interested in exploring how time fractures and the subconscious would penetrate someone’s state of denial. With that in mind, I wanted to create an unreliable narrator, a character that is grappling with their own truth. Eli is someone who doesn’t want to face this new version of themselves, and who would do anything for validation, a battle with The Ego. They black out as a way to avoid dealing with this new desperate version of themselves. However, their behavior begins to push away the people they care about the most.

"Eli, Briefly" is a story about mourning yourself and being forced to see the parts of yourself you’ve been hiding from. The film follows Eli as they experience the five stages of grief as they come to terms with their actions: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These are not linear, but we are with Eli as they remember the night before and recognize how they’ve boiled over. They end in the wings of their theater, about to go on stage. There is the uncomfortable knowing this fraught person will receive applause no matter what. But there is also a moment of redemption - we see Eli channel all of their confusion, hurt, and wanting, into a moment of artistic creation. Instead of backing down, they chose to move through it. In the end, we are left with trepidation and hope, they will either repeat the cycle or use this experience for the betterment of themselves and their art.