The Slamdance Film Festival runs Digitally and In-Person from January 19th to January 28th.
Director Ian Bawa’s short film is a very sad and gut wrenching drama about grief and how we deal with a major loss in our lives. Bawa’s film is a half documentary half fictional tale through the eyes of an East Asian man who just lost his wife. After her sad unfortunate death, he and his son struggle to cope, but he falls silent. The pair go through various doctors who rule him “sick in the head” despite feeling immense loss from his mother.
Eventually he begins to talk to a shadow that he is convinced is his mother, and soon his father also begins to see the shadow. “My Son Went Quiet” is a very heartbreaking movie that approaches the concept of loss and death in various shades that will definitely arouse conversation from the audience. Maybe his son has gone silent because he’s sick in the head. Or maybe it’s just society’s vilification of mental illness and the unwillingness to allow men to grieve properly.
Perhaps he’s manifesting his mother’s presence because he wasn’t allowed to mourn her and convey his emotions. There are so many depictions of the main character weeping in the dark, mourning his wife, and then having to put on a strong front for his son and generally everyone else. Grief can take on so many forms, and our brains can elicit so many bizarre manners of coping with loss. Nonetheless, “My Son Went Quiet” is a really depressing film, but one that shows how denying our feelings about loss can manifest in unusual ways.