Private Project

Revelation

After a major trauma, a detective takes on a case that will test how ready she is to return to work. Starring: Michelle Mazza, Alfred C. Kemp, Catherine Curtin and Peter Gerety.

  • Libe Barer
    Director
    "With the Fishes"
  • Felise Garcia
    Writer
    "Looking Through the Trees"
  • Seth Chitwood
    Producer
    "Luna, The Witch"
  • Michelle Mazza
    Key Cast
    "Rachelle"
    "FBI"
  • Alfred Kemp
    Key Cast
    "Anthony "
    "Law and Order: Organized Crime"
  • Peter Gerety
    Key Cast
    "Joe"
    "Charlie Wilson's War," "Flight"
  • Catherine Curtin
    Key Cast
    "Lisa"
    "Stranger Things," "Orange is the New Black"
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Drama, Crime
  • Runtime:
    15 minutes 34 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    August 31, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    20,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Libe Barer

Libe Barer is best known for playing Carly Bowman on the Amazon series "Sneaky Pete" starring Giovanni Ribisi and Margo Martindale. Barer recently directed and wrote her first short film "With the Fishes" starring Ruby McCollister.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

When I was approached about doing this film, I was skeptical about making a movie about a cop. But then I became very interested in the question of how do you tell a cop story in 2023?

Throughout film history cop stories have been a pillar of genre. In the wake of the 2020 George Floyd protests and subsequently what has come out about the history and systems of policing, the genre has been recontextualized and holds a different weight. There was a lot of conversation around Copaganda and the ways in which media about cops skews people’s perceptions of police and their actual function in society.

In cop movies, cops are lauded for breaking the rules (rules that have been put in place to protect people) as long as they ultimately “catch the bad guy”. As we’ve seen, in the real world this can have deadly consequences.

So I wondered, is there a way to tell stories that involve cops in a different way, or is Copaganda inherent to the genre and does it all together need to be put to rest? It is a job that is ripe with great stories, so I was curious in exploring the former. Can we tell these stories in a way that doesn’t lionize the cops, but still allows us to see into this world? In ways that allows them to be flawed people who are not vindicated in the end? Who sometimes get it wrong?

In preparing for this project I spoke with Black Lives Matter activists about Copaganda tropes and how to subvert them. I also spoke to cops in Long Island to understand who these people really are.

Revelation is the story of a grieving and flawed woman and her partner with his own secrets. He lives a sort of double life because who he really is can’t be held in the world of his work. It’s a story about the human complexities and paradoxes we hold.

I wanted to invert the form of cop movie, in which the story is normally structured around a case and their emotional arch as people is at best the character’s motivating engine and at worst is just tangential. This movie is structured around this grieving mother’s emotional journey coming back to work.

The way she navigates the case is a product of the state she as a person is in, and the case itself ultimately reveals itself to be tangential.