Facing It
A short film I highly recommend about anxiety and loneliness.
When something hits me as hard as it does, quite often it’s because I experience that feeling of “being seen.” Well watching Sam Gainsborough’s excellent short film Facing It was the most seen I’ve felt in some time.
The portrayal of anxiety and loneliness in a crowd is beautifully depicted. The claymation also adds a layer of surreal that greatly appeals to my love for the weird.
Here is the synopsis to persuade you to set aside 6 minutes to give it a watch:
[In] Facing It, a young man of perhaps college age named Shaun grapples with the feeling of being trapped in the cage of his own mind, helpless to escape it. The viewer is given access to Shaun’s eyes and ears. His sensory perspective is dreamlike: imaginative, yet brushing up against a recognisable reality. But, as you might expect, it’s not a pleasant dream – his world is populated by characters with strange clay faces that sit atop human bodies, and their muffled voices echo incomprehensibly. As if submerged underwater, Shaun is out of his depth.