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  • Asia Premiere

Spotlight

Enclosed

Director: YANG Yi (杨翼)

2022|USA, China|19min|Language: English, Spanish|Subtitles: English, Japanese

Date Time Venue
3/12 Sat 11:40《Short films program 5》 Cine Libre Umeda 4
3/17 木 16:20《Short films program 5》 Cine Libre Umeda 4
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Starring
Ashton MIRAMONTES
Talia MARTIN
Emiliano LOPEZ
Synopsis

With his father away from the house, a shy 14-year-old boy named Julio (Ashton MIRAMONTES) lets his longing for the affection of April (Talia MARTIN), his family’s cleaning lady, spill over during one hot summer's day. The atmosphere is with longing and his interactions overplayed as Julio leaves signs of his desire around the house for April to discover as she goes about the quotidian aspects of her routine. As the day wears on and they get closer, he works up the courage to get closer to her, but what the youngster doesn’t quite register is that she bears the marks of violence and that his long-hoped-for moment of intimacy may see him left traumatised.

[Jason MAHER]

Director's Message

The inspiration of the story comes from a piece of news in China where a man was sexually abused by a woman on the street, but the police ended up arresting the man. This news seems absurd, but it makes me question the boundary of "normal" and "abnormal". I strongly believed that most of the phenomena that become the hot topic in society comes from human emotions and some detailed "normal" motive. Also, it makes me wonder about the difference of the perspective between men and women in society. Stereotypes tend to define men as the culprits and women as the victims. Therefore, I decided to set up a plot where the woman starts the inappropriate behavior in front of the man to explore what the audience would feel when men and women act out of the social stereotype. In my opinion, the process of fighting for equal rights between men and women would be better if we notice that men and women suffer the same, which means men can also be victims.

During the process of creating the script, I used my past experience, mostly from my bittersweet first crush experience, as the reference. My experience is pretty similar to what my protagonist goes through in this film. Like the little boy in the film, sometimes I feel puzzled about my past experience. Therefore, I designed an open ending to make the audience think and probably give me and the character the answer. Normally, I do not like films that have clear protagonists and clear antagonists. I believe that everyone who commits the wrongdoing can also be the victim in his/her personal life. Therefore, in this film, I would like the audience focus not on defining the protagonist and the antagonist, but this negative energy in the big environment the little boy is suffocated by his dad's control, the cleaning lady is cynical and tired with her endless family violence, and the dad, who is a control freak at home, loses control and is someone negligible on society. By doing that, Overall, the mission for Enclosed is to make the audience reflect on society.