Before I Sleep
Director: Victoria Shefer
Writer: Victoria Shefer
Based on: Robert Frost‘s poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Cast: Lee Rayne
Seen on: 24.8.2022

Plot:
Every year, Ms Barrow (Lee Rayne) comes back to the beach to remember her dead child on its birthday. Every year, she faces a choice again.

Before I Sleep is an atmospheric short film with really spectacular cinematography, especially considering that it’s a basically-no-budget production. I especially liked a moment where the film is edited out of order as Ms Barrow falls/throws herself into the waves. The sound mixing is a little off, or maybe just not calibrated to my home set-up, making the words hard to understand over the music, but since Frost’s poem is the only text in the film and is readily available online, it doesn’t matter that much. The emotion of Rayne’s delivery finds its way to the audience regardless. In short, a promising short from a young filmmaker.