ShortList 2023: ‘Birds’ Recalls the Laid-Back Texan Natures of Richard Linklater and Terrence Malick

thewrap.com:

“Birds” was selected as a finalist in this year’s ShortList Film Festival, presented by TheWrap. You can watch the films and vote for your favorite here.Austin, Texas has proven the cinematic groundswell for filmmakers from Richard Linklater, to Robert Rodriguez and Terrence Malick (more on him in just a sec).

Los Angeles native Katherine Propper joins the fray with “Birds,” her supremely elegiac short about teens discovering themselves under the hot sun of an Austin summer.“I definitely wanted to showcase some of my favorite spots, and it really started with me finding [actor] Payton Washington on Instagram, a cheerleader and tumbler,” Propper told TheWrap. “I DM’d her and asked if I could meet her, and if she was interested in maybe being in a student film?” (If her name reads somewhat familiar, Washington was also the unfortunate victim of a violent incident in Elgin, Texas that made the news this year in which she and a friend were wounded by gunfire by a man in a supermarket parking lot after a misunderstanding.

Their assailant was quickly arrested and thankfully both women survived the incident.)This led to drafting a large number of youths to fill out her 14-minute short about flirting, foraging and fraternizing amongst a diverse lot in a series of spirited and observational scenes, including Washington, who was born with one lung and has a tense moment with an asthma attack in the film “that was scripted,” the writer-director assures us.

There’s also more young people, many of whom went to school with her younger brother, who shared their stories and experiences with Propper which went directly into the film.“[Those conversations] sort of sparked in me the idea of wanting to do something with young people that.