From Omeleto.
A teenager fights back.
SHOEBOX is used with permission from D’Angelo Louis. Learn more at https://dlolouis.com.
James is a teenager who has grown up in difficult circumstances, with a childhood defined by abandonment and abuse. With little guidance and opportunity, he’s turned to crime to fend for himself, but he’s not completely embroiled in that life yet.
But when he finds himself in the crosshairs of a cruel rival, he is faced with a difficult choice: to protect himself or not by meeting violence with violence.
Directed and written by D’Angelo Louis, this gritty and artful short drama is both a portrait of a young man trying to find his way through and out of a difficult milieu and a meditation on choice, destiny and agency in a world with little room to grow and thrive. James is at an age where he should be looking forward to impending adulthood, learning who he is and what path he can carve in life. But he’s consumed with the need to survive instead, navigating a world full of fear and uncertainty, as well as a burden of trauma and abuse that never lightens.
Sparse but briskly paced, the film has a patina of social realism, with its dynamic, hand-held camerawork and naturalistic cinematography and a voiceover of James’s mother reading her letters to her son aloud. It does capture how visceral it feels for James to navigate moments of fear, danger and isolation, particularly in his troubled relationship to his father. But it also has a formal audacity, with mosaic-like editing and artfully expressive shots. It also splits the screen as characters make decisions that change their ultimate destiny. These other paths proceed side-by-side on the screen, ferrying James into new choices — and new directions for his still-evolving character.
These key points are where the film’s larger meaning comes into play, when James faces decisions and choices on how to act in increasingly difficult situations. Will he listen to his better nature, reflected in the hopes and regrets of his mother in the letters she writes him? Or will he find himself giving in to the desire to answer a threat with one of his own? As young James, actor AJ Hudson offers a thoughtful, arresting performance that captures a young man on a precipice, one that will determine the course of the rest of his life. Those choices are predicated on James’s ability to stay calm and choose — or burn hot and react, often with consequences that will affect the rest of his life.
Compelling and dynamic, SHOEBOX shows what can happen when difficult life circumstances overwhelm rationality, leading to bad choices we may spend the rest of our lives paying for. It acknowledges how hard it is to take this course of mindful action. Still, it may be one of the few ways to break intergenerational cycles, especially because one wrong move or decision can alter a life, as well as the lives of families and friends, forever. We are interconnected, and the echoes of our actions can resound well after we are gone.
