IndieWire’s recent The 25 Best Female Performances of the 21st Century list is a great read, but one of the films on that list is a personal favorite here at TFF, and we wanted to take a minute to just tell you a little about it.
In 2013, as part of our New Faces of Film series, we brought Destin Daniel Cretton’s feature film, Short Term 12, to the Tallahassee audience. The feature adapts Cretton’s own short film from 2008 of the same name, and expands on it to paint a beautiful and enlightening picture of life at a young adult treatment facility. It’s also a refreshing look at the role of foster care — for once foster parents are not portrayed as the bad guys, but rather as the rare catalysts for bringing out the best in someone when it may have otherwise been stifled, suppressed or lost.
There are so many great, relatively unknown actors in this film. LaKeith Stanfield, the young man who plays Marcus, is just phenomenal. Each one of them is superb with unique personalities which they bring to their characters.
That said, it’s Brie Larson who stands out the most, and while a face which you may have recognized from a lot of other movies and TV in 2013, she’d actually never been in a lead role until this film. Larson generated much Oscar talk about this performance, but it’s really her ability to stand out in what is a talented young, ensemble cast, while at the same time, allowing her character to have multiple dimensions and a palpable vulnerability.
As an encore presentation to our 2013 screening, we also put on a special closed-door screening of this wonderful film for the hardworking and dedicated employees of Tallahassee’s Capital City Youth Services (CCYS), with much great discussion to be had after the presentation. We continue to appreciate and support the incredible work the CCYS team does in Tallahassee to this day.
To see more great films that we’ve shown and that we continue to appreciate, check out our past film highlights over on the Films page.
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One final note! Be sure to keep an eye out for LaKeith Stanfield’s upcoming conceptual dance film, Changers: A Dance Story, co-starring Mia Wasikowska and directed by Spike Jonze.