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When a distraught teen encounters a grieving mother at the train tracks in Silicon Valley, he must choose between his conviction and empathy before time runs out.

  • Shruti Tewari
    Director
    Trail Past Prejudice
  • Shruti Tewari
    Writer
    Trail Past Prejudice, Flares, Stain Resistant
  • Shruti Tewari
    Producer
    Trail Past Prejudice
  • Simon Santos
    Key Cast
    "Boy"
  • Monica Dani
    Key Cast
    "Mother"
  • Preston Yeung
    Key Cast
    "Son"
  • Kiran Harpanhalli
    Cinematographer
    Love, Pyar, Whatever
  • Diana Chen
    Editor
  • Amruta Hardikar
    Script Supervisor
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    8 minutes 45 seconds
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Silicon Valley Asian Pacific Film Festival
    Sunnyvale
    United States
    October 2, 2021
    Official Selection
Director Biography - Shruti Tewari

SHRUTI TEWARI has spent two decades in the creative arts with projects ranging from a Bollywood blockbuster to award winning indies.

Last year she completed the Sundance Collab directors and producers programs to develop her first feature, "Flares," the screenplay for which won the Alliance of Women Filmmakers Scriptwriting Competition and was a finalist at WeScreenplay Diverse Voices Lab and Big Apple Film Festival. She also wrote and directed, "Trail Past Prejudice," which won the Silver Remi Award at WorldFest Houston.

She was awarded a Certificate of Honor by the City and County of San Francisco for mentoring at-risk youth.

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Director Statement

As a Silicon Valley mother and a filmmaker, the cluster suicides around 2015 left me shaken to the core. My own children were high school teenagers at the time. Seeing despair and disillusionment spread over their mindscapes was not just hard, it was excruciating.

I ran out of words to comfort them with, after each suicide, and somehow my empathetic silence ended up working miracles when profound analysis and rationalizations failed. So, I created this piece where a grieving mother runs into a distraught teen and without any words being exchanged, they understand and empathize with one another's pain. Letting the moment of overwhelming anguish pass is all it takes for darkness to turn to light. And that is the foundation of this short film - hold tough during the period of darkness and light shall come to your rescue.

Besides the interplay of intense darkness giving way to natural light at dawn, I have also used natural sounds to underscore non-verbal communication between two strangers. The sound of the train is the most prominent sound in the film that eclipses all else, but only for a brief moment. What survive are the sounds of human heartbeat, breath and life.