With a love for embracing and subverting genre, Nathan Ginter looks to create films that mix the absurd with satisfying narrative. Nathan is currently a BFA film student at Pratt Institute, and his most recent short films, Last Seen and The Businessman, are currently in the festival circuit.
Visual storytelling has the potential to reach beyond spoken language, beyond culture and touch the soul. This is what you achieved with your film in which there is very little dialogue. Was this a beforehand decision making? Or was it a spontaneous upshot while filmmaking?
The use of silence, as well as the fragmented visuals, was decided on during the script stage. I think the difficulty of communication and connection is faced by all of the characters within the story, and it felt the film should also be plagued by that same silence and isolation. Hopefully, the film allows for an expression of the character’s experience, both tactile emotion, and dissociation, that could not be verbally expressed given their circumstance.
How would you explain Devon’s connection to the sea monkey pets his sister left behind?
To Devon, the Sea Monkeys present a point of connection to his missing sister, representing a hope that she might return while also serving as a constant reminder of the circumstance he finds himself in. I think this creates a really complicated relationship with the Sea Monkeys that is nurturing, while also showcasing a more cynical desire to implement control in a time when Devon has none.
We could feel Devon’s tension with his mother under the given circumstances. Do you believe there is a chance to reconcile oneself with the absence of a missing loved one and with no leads.