Private Project

Away in Silence

Julia, an impaired elderly lady left to take care of her grandson as her daughter goes to work, faces a big decision when accidentally dropping her grandson’s only edible food: help the starving toddler by giving into her shame of using her new crutches or in her selfish pride, refuse to use them to go find food outside.

  • Tomás Ferreira
    Director
    Fate (Short Fiction); In a House, At Night (Short Fiction)
  • Tomás Ferreira
    Writer
    Alfama is of the Singers (Short documentary), Winter (Short Fiction), The end of Summer (Short Fiction)
  • Linas Skuja
    Producer
    Trial by ordeal (Short Fiction)
  • Joyce Karim
    Key Cast
    "Julia"
  • Sally Richards
    Key Cast
    "Annie"
    The Embalmer's Daughter (Short Fiction), Venn (Experimental Short film)
  • Tomás Ferreira
    Editor
    Entrudo (Short documentary), FATE (Short Fiction), In a House, At Night (Short Fiction)
  • Project Type:
    Short, Student
  • Runtime:
    10 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    September 30, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    790 GBP
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    UHD Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes - University of South Wales
Director Biography - Tomás Ferreira

Graduate from Lisbon Theater and Film School (Screenwriting & Editing) and with a completed MA in Film Directing from the University of South Wales, Tomás is a Portuguese filmmaker who has been developing his writing skills and reflective process over different projects in order to best understand his storytelling voice before directing his own work, inclined to minimalist film making and thought provoking stories.

Recently, he has directed four shorts films. Among them, a 2020 documentary promoted by a renowned Portuguese film critic, his final major project, "In a House, At Night" (2021) and the fiction drama, "Away in Silence" (2021), screened publicly at Cardiff Chapter Arts Center. He was also involved in aiding the writing development of a short film accepted for a creative supporting program at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.

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Director Statement

The challenge of expressing the first encounter with old age in a minimalist way intrigued me: What is to accept when we finally become “old”? Considering the crutches, what is to accept an extension of us as part of us so we can go on living?

I desired to explore these questions in a new way: through the relationship with this inanimate object embodied by Julia's crutches, I wanted to inspect this very angry silent rejection born against it, but also the sense of shame to even disclose this feeling with another person, even if dear to us. To give an object, the crutches, such a human and terrible presence in someone’s life, felt then complex and transversal to human experience in its simplicity.