Experiencing Interruptions?

no regrets

"no regrets" is an award-winning short documentary that relates to us all—what we must all face in the foreseeable future. Its visually altered imagery of jittery posterized patches of colors, duotone effects and closeups emphasizing shapes, colors and movement allow the viewer to get a sense of an otherworldliness that the subject in the documentary, an elderly woman with dementia, might feel. Her varying range of experiences manifest from an existence of lucidity to the slippery slope of physical and mental decline. "no regrets" is a cautionary tale—if you're not careful about letting time slip away from you, you may very well fall into that black hole of regrets.

  • Emeline Mann Sanchez
    Director
  • Emeline Mann Sanchez
    Writer
  • Emeline Mann Sanchez
    Producer
  • Mae Fong Mann
    Key Cast
    "mom"
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    6 minutes 23 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    May 5, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    0 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    Yue Chinese (Cantonese)
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Buffalo International Film Festival
    Buffalo
    United States
    October 7, 2023
    North American Premier
    Official Selection
  • Split Film Festival
    Split
    Croatia
    October 16, 2023
    Croatia Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Ponza Film Award
    Ponza
    Italy
    October 3, 2023
    World Premiere
    Best Experimental Film
  • Kiez Berlin Film Festival
    Berlin (screening discussed but I was not ready)
    Germany
    Best Experimental Film (May 2023)
Director Biography - Emeline Mann Sanchez

Emeline is an award-winning producer and director. Her first documentary, caring for mom, screened at the Marina del Rey Film Festival where it won the Audience Award for Best Short Documentary; it also won the award for Best Health and Medicine Film at the Kiez Berlin Film Festival, Best Short Documentary at the Ponza Film Awards, and will be screening online at the Seattle Film Summit and Split Film Festival/International Festival of New Film, an initiative of the Social World Film Festival.

Emeline’s most recent documentary, no regrets, has won Best Experimental Film at both the Kiez Berlin Film Festival and Ponza Film Awards, and will be screening in that same category at the Buffalo International Film Festival.

On the varied paths in her ongoing journey, Emeline was recruited to be an art director for an Easter Seals telethon broadcast in San Francisco, finessed her way into an impromptu internship at a local Oakland television station, completed a yearlong apprenticeship at a local Berkeley radio station—all leading to accidental filmmaker when her BFF, her dearest, sweetest mother left this world, the same mom she had been caregiving for the past 10+ years.

In her documentaries, Emeline shows how being with an elderly parent in their latter years can be rewarding not only for the parent but for the children; it is in the here and now and is a future that pertains to all of humanity.

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Director Statement

Those familiar with Alzheimer's can see the contrast of a functioning patient and the latter stages of decline. This entry visually immerses the viewer into their world of shifting sensibilities and cognition.

Come what may, it is ideal to be involved with your elderly parent(s) in her/his/their physical and emotional activities; this benefits the parent, as well as the children, and should the conditions be right, caring for your parents yourself can be transcendentally rewarding.

The joys of caring for your elderly parent at home is the day-to-day interactions that will go every which way it will; all things—the banal, the milestones, the good, the bad, and everything in between, would be lost or at best, few and far between if your parent was away from home.