Extra Time receives its first review

After receiving the Best Writing award along with four other nominations at the Monkey Bread Tree Film Awards, the jury have released their review for the short film about a young girl struggling to connect with her father after her parents divorce.

"The strange thing about short films is once you’ve seen a random sample of about 100 of them from the same regions in the world (specifically western ones), all within a month or two, you become somewhat desensitised. They blur together covering several familiar themes: loss, fleeting romance, chases, escapes, survival, growing up and so on.

The special thing about Extra Time is just this – we have seen this film already. And yet, we haven’t, because it isn’t the dynamic which makes the theme new, or how the story is told to us in terms of plot… but rather how it is told to us in tone. This is what makes this particular take on the divorce ‘growing up’ story new.

Extra Time has been directed incredibly well by Caris Rianne through the sheer multilayered character relations which she employs. We have access to the family, the sibling, the father, the friends, and all within a few moments, we learn how they interact with one another, who does what and why. And this notion of detail is explored in other elements of the film – we have a very careful set of camera angles, edits are sparing and selective, and music comfortably enhances the film’s motifs.

The only criticism due isn’t a technical one, or even a negative one really, but – at times the film did feel rather ‘short’. The director, the cast, the team overall had achieved a great engaging effort here, one that they had perhaps outgrown by the end of the production. Perhaps a feature, or a more challenging short, will be their next step; as it is the one they are definitely ready for, having succeeded in making a fantastically engaging and warming short film already."

Extra Time is still going through the film festival circuit but is planned to be released online at the end of 2016. You can read more about the Monkey Bread Tree Film Awards on their website.

The trailer for Extra Time, starring Best Actress nominee Lydia Lakemoore is below.