HALF LIVES

A 73-minute fictional Arthouse movie. LOGLINE: "Sonia, a middleaged bartender, rescues a girl being beaten by her boyfriend, who chases Sonia into the street where she is hit by a car. Badly injured, Sonia has to move into her estranged mother’s house, who shortly thereafter suddenly dies of natural causes.”

By the end of HALF LIVES by Sylvia Toy, the protagonist, Sonia and her Aunt Alicia are fighting over Sonia’s RBG teeshirt and 70 year old Alicia’s refusal to wear a face mask except where required during the Covid 19 Pandemic of 2020.

The two women are grieving the death of Sondra, Alicia’s twin sister and Sonia’s mother, who died in her sleep shortly before the Pandemic was declared in the United States. Sonia’s grief is overshadowed by assuming the care of and learning to live with Alicia.

Themes of domestic abuse and mother/daughter conflict run throughout this story about 3 unconventional but nevertheless middle-class black American women. They are bound together not only by the home they share but also by a strong family trait of female independence.

HALF LIVES is based on monologues that were improvised on camera; and random real-life incidents that I've witnessed or experienced in public places. The dollhouse represents the house the women live in; and is a metaphor for the half lives we all lead in the gap between our inner and outer lives.