ShortList 2023: ‘Rest Stop’ Director Wants Audiences to Ask ‘What Feels Safe?’

thewrap.com:

“Rest Stop” 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.“Rest Stop,”, one of the finalists of TheWrap’s 2023 ShortList Film Festival, is a snapshot of the moment in life when a child realizes that their mother is also more than just mom.

Written and directed by Crystal Kayiza, the 12-minute feature chronicles an attempted family reconciliation seen through the eyes of their pre-teen daughter.

The picture, which premiered at the 2022 Toronto Film Festival and won the Jury Prize for Best US Short Film at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, uses the child’s eye-view to shape a simple road trip and mark it as a turning point for an entire family.

Through the journey, as a willing participant and a bystander, Meyi, a young Ugandan-American girl, comes to terms with her mother’s self-sacrifice, someone putting her dreams on hold for a chance at stability and something approaching the American Dream. “I started writing in early 2020, just before COVID,” Kayiza stated in a conversation with TheWrap. “That was also the year I was nearing the age my mother was when she came to the US.” She noted that she wanted the film to represent her mother’s world at that time, including her perception of that world.