In Awfully Deep, a dystopian short film by Daniel Florencio, a family lives a nice life in the suburbs until a stinky brown substance appears outside of their home. Their son wants to get his hands dirty and clean it up, but his parents insist it is someone else’s job.
The cast for this film has done a great job of bringing story’s main idea to life, depicting middle class routines and a general funk of bleakness.
At first, Awfully Deep struck us monotonous, however it quickly became clear that this is all intentional, as it served to demonstrate an emotional distance between the family, in exchange for focus on other things.
Brazilian born, British director Daniel Florencio started his film-making career with incisive documentary shorts produced for Al Gore’s Emmy Awarded ‘Current TV’. For ‘Current TV’ he directed ‘Tracking William, a Night with a Paparazzo’, from which the idea for ‘Chasing Robert Barker”, his first feature film, originated.
Florencio’s ‘Awfully Deep’ has been screened in festivals all over the world, winning an audience awards at ShortShorts Film Festival in Tokyo and a honorable mention at the Ohio, Athens Short Film Festival. ‘Awfully Deep’, was also long listed for a BAFTA and is distributed by Canal+ in France.
The full list of screenings and awards for the film is as follows:
2010 – Utopiales – Festival de Science Fiction de Nantes – France
2011 – Clermont Ferrand International Short Film Festival — France
2011 – Honourable Mention – Athens International Short Film Festival — USA
2011 – Munich International Short Film Festival – Germany
2011 – Dirt Exhibition — Wellcome Collection – London
2011 – Paris L’Etrange Film Festival – France
2011 – St. Petersburg Open Air Festival – Russia
2011 – Rhode Island Horror Film Festival – USA
2011 – Istanbul International Short Film Festival – Turkey
2012 – BAFTA – Short Film Award Longlist
2013 – ŻUBROFFKA Short Film Festival – Poland
2014 – J-Wave Award Audience Award – Tokyo ShortShorts Film Festival & Asia – Japan
2016 – Nominated Best Short – World Bank Film4Climate Competition
*****
If you’ve enjoyed Awfully Deep by Daniel Florencio, you can access Mystery Tribune’s online archive of crime, mystery, and horror short films, please visit here.