"The After" now playing on Netflix

 

"The After" 

now playing on Netflix

There’s always a danger when creating a short film about the loss of a child. No one in the world wants to lose one…it’s against the natural law of life. Burying a child shatters from the inside out.

In the short film “The After” now playing on Netflix, we are introduced to Dayo (Oyelowo), an atypical working husband and father who appears to be holding down a solid job. We meet him on a typical day – wonderfully ordinary – spending quality time with his young daughter Laura (Dokubo), on their way to meet her mother (Plummer). This is a picture of a modern family and then…the unthinkable happens, and he loses them both in the blink of an eye.

“The After” is the first short film by photographer Misan Harriman. The bulk of the short film lives inside Dayo's memory, as one would expect, focusing on those small yet profound moments that have become crucial for him to cling to after his loss. He's left his corporate job and now spends his days as a driver, where he listens and watches snippets of his customers' lives

Si Bell’s cinematography is lush, which makes it no surprise that it took the top prize at the Best Live Action Short at the Oscar-qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival.

This short film burdens the actor with a hefty load, yet Oyelowo manages it adeptly; he is, after all, a finely tuned instrument. Here, it manages to work, but just barely, given the screenplay's thin and fragile nature.