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Max, a woman in her early 30s who has recently lost her mother, attempts to reconnect with her estranged father in a comedy about grief, longing and magical thinking.

  • Julie Goldstone
    Director
  • Nat Mauldin
    Writer
    Barney Miller, Open Season, Dr. Doolittle
  • Annie Huang
    Producer
  • Ally Maki
    Producer
  • R.K. Russell
    Producer
  • Rhea Damani
    Producer
  • Ally Maki
    Key Cast
    "Max"
    Shortcomings, Seagrass, The Big Door Prize
  • Alysia Reiner
    Key Cast
    "Angela"
    Orange Is The New Black, Sideways, Ava's Possessions, The Diplomat
  • Sarunas Jackson
    Key Cast
    "Ruben"
    Insecure, Good Trouble, Clipped
  • Yuji Okumoto
    Key Cast
    "Dr. Kimura"
    The Karate Kid II, Jhonny Tsunami, Inception, Pearl Harbor
  • Eugene Usanov
    Cinematographer
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    comedy, drama
  • Runtime:
    18 minutes 22 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    February 2, 2026
  • Production Budget:
    20,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital, Alexa Mini
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2.39:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Julie Goldstone

Julie Goldstone an award-winning French-American film director and visual storyteller. Her debut short film, The Elevator, premiered at New York Fashion Week and went on to win multiple awards across the international festival circuit, including honors from the Cannes World Film Festival, Paris Play Film Festival, and the Independent Shorts Awards.

Prior to filmmaking, Julie built a celebrated career as a fashion and portrait photographer, with her work appearing in Vogue, The New York Times, and global campaigns for leading brands. Her evolution from still photography to cinema was a natural progression - transforming her refined eye for light, movement, and emotional nuance into narrative form.

Now based in Los Angeles, Julie’s films merge her European sensibility with a distinctly modern visual language. She gravitates toward stories that explore the quiet tension between identity and desire, often capturing beauty in fleeting, unguarded moments. Influenced by European auteurs and the spontaneous intimacy of her children’s camcorder footage, her work reflects a deep fascination with how the ordinary becomes cinematic. Julie is currently working on her debut feature, Salted.

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Director Statement

“I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things”
- Tom Waits

When my dad was in the hospital, his texts weren’t about goodbyes or big life reflections. they were about cinnamon buns. How fast could I get them to him? Did I know the best kind? I go back to those messages a lot, amazed at how something so small could carry so much weight. It was funny and gut-wrenching all at once, kind of like grief itself.

Losing him changed the way I see the world and the way I tell stories. Grief isn’t neat or predictable. It catches you off guard, mixes heartbreak with humor, and somehow, even in the heaviest moments, life keeps throwing you absurd little reminders that you’re still here.

That’s what this film is about. Max, our protagonist, moves through that tangled mess of loss, where the unbearable and the ridiculous live side by side. Where letting go isn’t really an option, you just learn new ways to hold on. If you’ve ever grieved, or if you’re in it now, I hope this story brings some comfort.

- Julie Goldstone

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
- Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

Magical thinking is the belief that our thoughts, rituals, or symbolic actions can influence events in ways that defy logic or causality. A desperate, deeply human attempt to impose order on the
uncontrollable.

Max, our protagonist, does this by bringing the best cinnamon buns to the hospital every single day, as if their warmth and sweetness might anchor her parent to life a little longer. She chooses them carefully, from the bakery that caramelizes the edges just right, keeping a pillowy, buttery dough that melts on the tongue and whose cinnamon-sugar swirls are rich and fragrant, topped with just enough velvety icing to sink into every warm, tender bite, because maybe this small
perfection will tip fate in their favor.

It’s irrational, of course, but grief and love make space for these quiet, stubborn superstitions. The idea that if she just gets it right, if she finds the one cinnamon bun that tastes like staying, her parent might choose to linger.