Directed by Emil Gallardo
DRAMA
This film is available from November 27-30, 2020. To watch or vote for this film please click on the orange “TICKETS” button below and purchase a ticket for BLOCK 2.
Synopsis
When a crisis suddenly engulfs an elementary school campus, Ms. Leena, a determined art teacher, tries everything she can to save her frightened class.
Director Biography – Emil Gallardo
In June of 2020, Emil was selected by HBO as a fellow in their Directing Fellowship. He is a Mexican American writer/director from Los Angeles who started his career in the AD department. After working on a variety of productions from commercials to independent features to studio TV shows, Emil left ADing to focus on writing and directing.
Emil’s stories usually deal with difficult topics and are motivated by building empathy for the characters and the worlds they live in. 1, 2, 3, All Eyes On Me, his current film, is no exception.
1, 2, 3 is just beginning its festival run and has been an official selection of four Oscar-qualifying festivals, nominated for the John Singleton Impact Award, won Best of Fest, Best Short, Best Performance and Best Director, and been nominated for several other awards.
Director’s Statement
My mom was a teacher for 30 years and watching her over the course of her career created a deep respect for what teachers do and the amount of themselves they give to their students. In addition to shrinking budgets and greater workloads, teachers nowadays also have to prepare their classes to hide or flee from the real possibility of being harmed in their classrooms.
While every mass shooting is a tragedy, it was the cell phone footage of a teacher trying to distract her young class from the gunfire outside by singing to them that hit me especially hard. The compassion and courage she displays under the most terrifying circumstance really affected me. There’s no way for her to fully succeed in protecting her students and yet she’s trying her best. Never is her own safety even a thought.
I made this film to illustrate how incredible these people are and how much they need our help to put an end to this violence.
Stylistically, our intention was to immerse the audience in the moment. While the film is fictional, I wrote it after interviewing several teachers, one of which was in a shooting. The film straddles the line between fiction and reality with the goal of helping the audience attain a true emotional understanding of what it’s like to be in a situation like this. I’m not aware of another short done in a style that is as immersive, honest or unflinching as this – all without showing any actual violence.
