I’ve never heard anyone describe their teenage years as a walk in the park. The unavoidable experience of post-adolescent years instead feel more like a crawl through a haunted house. Reaching in the dark through a place you’ve never been before, monsters jump out at you without warning (peer pressure!), loud sounds make you jump out of your skin (mood swings!), and shifting floors and sharp corners line your path (pop quizzes! College decisions! etc!). Young adults today are confronted with a whole new room in this spooky arena: the hall of mirrors that is social media. Everything you do and say is reflected back at you through the lens of your peers, and your reputation either wins, stays the same or tanks as a result.
If you’re lucky, you have a friend to hold your hand through all of this scary muck, joining you along for the ride and reminding you that you’re not alone. But what happens when that trusted confidant takes off their mask, exposing a frenemy? What will you do when they hold the mirror up to your face, and what you see is another monster?
Such is the horror story of SXSW 2018 short “Kira Burning,” where the protagonist’s ex-best friend Ruby has betrayed her trust by posting a revealing and humiliating video of her on Instagram for all of her peers to see. Vowing revenge, a group of Kira’s classmates break into her former bud’s house to destroy her personal space and shake her sense of security at home. The vulnerable pieces of information they uncover about Ruby lead them to do much more harm than intended, and in the end all parties involved are left to reckon with the fact that their desire to hurt each other was just a mask for their own insecurity and vulnerabilities.
Filmmaker Laurel Parmet’s script magically transforms you into a teenager again, feeling Kira’s pain and relating to her determination to make her former friend pay for what she’s done. It’s easy to become lost in the strong emotions of her character, which was Parmet’s intention:
“I definitely empathize with Kira, I think we’ve all felt what she feels, we all know that sting of betrayal. But it was important to me that there be moral ambiguity in this film. Ultimately Kira goes too far, she does something horrific and unforgivable. And yet, we still feel for her in the end. I like to explore those gray areas, where the audience roots for a character even though they disagree with her actions and decisions. That’s when stories come alive for me, when the viewer is put in a dilemma like that.”
Even if you’ve exited your teen years and consider yourself a stable, sensible person, “Kira Burning” makes you consider how easy it is for your rational self to turn rotten when your heart and ego have been hurt, especially when you’re supported by a group of people in a similar headspace. As Parmet elaborates:
“I hope audiences watch the film and feel things, and see parts of themselves in what they see on screen – That may be too reductive, but it’s pretty much my agenda when making films – I hope to share pieces of myself that will feel familiar, maybe hit too close to home, make you wrestle with parts of yourself. And I hope you’ll enjoy the ride.”
If you’d like to see more films our curation team was psyched on, check out our past Staff Pick Premieres over on this page.
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