This cheerfully humdrum rom-com presents a very homemade slice of first-lockdown life. But can its squabbling couple make it through a mysterious pandemic? Co-writers and filmmakers Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan play Kallia and Ram: young lovers
vacationing to New York just as the pandemic unfolds. They’ve already descended into petty name-calling when the travel ban prolongs their trip indefinitely, trapping them in Kallia’s uncle’s apartment.
Semi-improvised and shot on a Hi8 camcorder that Shaw and
Kamalakanthan found during their own real lockdown, its grainy VHS footage nails the frustrations of personal and creative helplessness in quarantine. – Callum McLean, IFF Rotterdam
Artemis Shaw, Prashanth
Kamalakanthan
USA 2023 | German Premiere
78 min | English
Special Jury Award Rotterdam 2023
Artemis Shaw
Greek-American filmmaker and lecturer from New York. She studied film at Columbia University, NYU Stern School of Business and NYU Tisch School of the Arts, among others. She has taught film at the Tribeca Film Institute, the Ghetto Film School and the Museum of the Moving Image.
Prashanth Kamalakanthan
Born in Tirupati (India), raised in Northern California. Filmmaker and lecturer. Trained with the NYU Graduate Film Programme. He teaches film and screenwriting at Virginia Commonwealth University and Brown University in Rhode Island.
Films (Artemis Shaw)
Single Room Occupancy 2016 | Aquaculture 2017 | Safari Video, For Mama 2018 | Real Talk 2020 | New Strains (mit Prashanth Kamalakanthan) 2023
Films (Prashanth Kamalakanthan)
Houseplants 2017 | A Hand 2018 | Have a Nice Life 2021 | New Strains (mit Artemis Shaw) 2023
Credits
B: Artemis Shaw, Prashanth Kama-lakanthan | K+S: Prashanth Kama-lakanthan | T: Eli Cohn | M: Will Epstein | P: Parori Productions | V: alief SAS | With Artemis Shaw, Prashanth Kamalakanthan, Cynthia Talmadge, Olivier Sherman