Britta Sjogren
2021In This Short Life
Britta Sjogren
Shot with a mixture of professional and non-professional actors (including the filmmaker herself) in the intimate black-and-white palette of older home movies, In This Short Life works the blurry margin between documentary and fiction. The film follows four mysteriously intertwined lives in Portland, Ore., and Los Angeles: an elderly woman ambivalently embarking on an affair; a mentally unstable man being evicted from his home; a frustrated actor waiting for his breakthrough; and a young female artist forced by a much-desired yet inconveniently-timed pregnancy to reassess the priorities in her life.
In This Short Life
Redemption Trail
Britta Sjogren
Lily Rabe, LisaGay Hamilton
Two powerful, yet deeply troubled women -- refugees from political and personal trauma -- flee a past that haunts them. The daughter of a murdered Black Panther revolutionary, Tess, (Hamilton) lives off the grid on a Sonoma vineyard, fiercely detached from all connections. Her hermetic life cracks when she gives reluctant shelter to a desperate young woman, Anna (Rabe) who has attempted suicide in a nearby forest. An unlikely alliance forms between the two, where other close relationships have failed -- David, Anna's husband, (Linklater) and John, Tess' employer (Weber), cannot break through their walls. But the very difference between the two women opens them up to a new vision of themselves, as not only survivors, but as heroes capable even of a thrilling shoot-out in the name of outlaw justice. Reclaiming freedom, and life, they plunge forward, towards an unknown, transformative horizon.
Redemption Trail
