Sickly
Director: Byron Leon
United States, 2020, 9 min
Shooting Format:16mm
Festival Year:2021
Category:Narrative Short
Genres:Comedy, Midnight
Cast:Michael San Juan
Crew:Writer: Byron Leon. Producer: Alexandria Sherman.
Email:byrondavidleon@gmail.com
Synopsis
Anxiously convinced his flu-like symptoms could be something much worse, a luckless Brooklynite winds up in a fever-dream series of misadventures as he searches through the night for medical care in an unfamiliar city.
Trailer
About the director
Byron Leon is an editor and filmmaker raised in Central Florida, who currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.
He assisted Academy Award Winning Producer Adele Romanski and Sara Murphy on Focus Features' "Never Rarely Sometimes, Always"— as well as Taylour Paige and Riley Keough on A24's upcoming Florida set film "Zola".
Using 16mm film donated from both "Zola" and "Never, Rarely...", Byron wrote and directed the short film "Sickly". He also produced "Tired Eyes", a short film selected to screen at the 2020 Montclair Film Festival.
Byron is currently working as the Lead Assistant Editor on Netflix’s upcoming multi-part Kanye West documentary.
Filmmaker's note
When we shot SICKLY back in October of 2019, I truly wasn't expecting face masks to become so commonplace.
The short was born from my own difficulties navigating the healthcare system when I moved to NYC. But as we were wrapping post-production and COVID-19 continued to spread across the globe, I reflected on how the pandemic would change the messaging of my short film. What started out as a comically inconvenient story of someone who could very well just be overreacting, turned into a tangible nightmare.
SICKLY takes a farcical, and oftentimes gross, approach to the anxieties surrounding the precarious nature of personal health. With this story, I hope to capture the raw confusion of navigating a city that never sleeps through the eyes of a feverish newcomer.
Thank you for watching SICKLY, and I hope you enjoy the film.