Experiencing Interruptions?

You Are Free to Leave

A young couple vacationing in Prague have a violent altercation in the street after a night out. They go their separate ways, each crossing paths with a stranger during the course of the night.

  • Harrison Fuller
    Director
  • Harrison Fuller
    Writer
  • Lindsay Taylor Stewart
    Producer
    Le syndrome de l'été sans fin
  • Diba Beihaghi
    Key Cast
    "Tara"
  • Harrison Fuller
    Key Cast
    "Harry "
  • Ali Habib Shreim
    Key Cast
    "Ruslan"
  • Veronika Bellova
    Key Cast
    "Karolina"
    Bratři, Vyhnáni z ráje
  • Cherif Azzeddine
    Cinematographer
  • Jana Lundius
    Production Designer
  • Project Type:
    Short, Student
  • Genres:
    Drama
  • Runtime:
    26 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    January 17, 2026
  • Production Budget:
    10,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Czechia
  • Country of Filming:
    Czechia
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital (ALEXA)
  • Aspect Ratio:
    1.85:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Prague Film School
Director Biography - Harrison Fuller

Harrison Fuller is a filmmaker and actor from Atlanta, GA, United States. At nineteen, he moved to Prague, Czech Republic to study at Prague Film School, a small European conservatory. Enrolled as a directing student, Fuller became a sought-after actor, performing in over twenty short films and live works, both student and professional, gaining recognition within the city's art scene. While in school, he worked closely with then-professor Kaveh Daneshmand ("Endless Summer Syndrome"), whose company would later produce his film. In 2024, Fuller graduated and went on to attend the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU) as a student of Authorial Acting. There he wrote and performed a one-man-show, "The Jezinkas and I".

He has directed two other short films: “Sentiment” (2017), a tone poem that received several plaudits including selections at the St. Albans and Catalina film festivals, and “Up & Over” (2022), an absurd experimental film.

Fuller’s work centers on performance as a site of psychological risk and ethical exposure. You Are Free to Leave is his most focused expression of that approach to date.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

"You Are Free to Leave" is a vérité portrait of a relationship — not in cinematic terms, but as an act of observation and documentation. It’s about two young people with interior lives: flaws, resentments, and jealousies. It’s about apparitions manifesting through obsession; the story of a self-fulfilling prophecy. From the moment I began to know these characters, I felt an obligation to meet them where they were, rather than force them into something more romantic or moral. The film is a contradiction in terms: a true fiction; reality, devised.

A screenwriting professor of mine once told us with a great deal of fervor: “You cannot have two protagonists.” When I later consulted with him on this script, he told me my project was an exception to the rule. I’m proud of that.

I wrote the first draft of "You Are Free to Leave" in December 2023, on a night train headed for Paris.

I was traveling to visit dear friends of mine, Iranian expats whom I’d met through my partner, Diba, who plays Tara in the film. They were some of the brightest people I'd met during my time in Prague, and in that moment, they were also the only ones who seemed able to share my pain: Diba’s visa had expired, and we hadn’t been able to see each other for many months. Only in being with my lovely Parisian hosts could my longing suffice — if only just a little bit.

I was entering my final year at a small film school in Prague. I had already written another short, "Mezera" (“The Gap” in Czech), a twelve-page black-and-white short about a pole dancer, loosely based on "Faust", and had begun casting it. But as I sat awake on that train, watching the German countryside pass in the dark, a terrible fantasy fixed itself in my head:

What if she meets someone else?
What if he’s jealous—like I am?
What if he leaves her hurt?

When we arrived in Paris that morning, I hadn’t slept, and the first draft of this film existed. It quickly consumed my life; it was the film I needed to make.

Though at times not entirely consciously, in creating ‘Harry’, I took parts of myself I found disagreeable and made them pathological.
Not only to interact with the audience beyond the text, but because it made the dramaturgy truer—perhaps even more dangerous. Narrowing the distance between myself and the character imposed a process of self-examination — by giving ‘Harry’ a different affect, backstory and set of circumstances (beyond just the choices he makes; loosely amalgamated from men I was around at the time), I allowed myself, with the help of my brilliant cast, the agency to do it relatively safely. My hope is this excites the audience in some way.

"You Are Free to Leave" is a love story, maybe in the oldest sense: two people orbiting each other with equal gravity, neither hero nor villain, both desperate to bare their soul — to be seen.

I leave the film with you.