Justine

A 26min short film about Justine Whitwell in the lead up to her 18th birthday - she cannot communicate through words like many of us. Instead, she communicates through gestures and sounds, very often accompanied by a smile.

Particularly endearing was her interest in the rabbits at Hazel Court School and her family's imitation of the animals from Old Macdonald's farm. My favourite moment of the film was at the park where little boys were running back and forth to fill their buckets from the tap and pour it in the sand in the sand pit, as Justine looks on excitably, exclaiming 'happy', 'happy'. One little boy approached the gate she stood at with his hands full and concentration focused completely on keeping the water in the bucket. Justine sees this and reaches out to open the gate for him - a sign that Justine knows exactly what is going on in the world around her but is just unable to communicate fully with it. It doesn't stop her trying though. 

As much as the situation seems sad, Justine's love for everything around her is uplifting and instead, you cannot help but smile.

As a film it struggled with a lack of voice and no narrator. Its structure suffered too by featuring all of the interviews at the end. There are moments in the film that lend themselves well to be placed after a particular interview response but instead they came one after another at the end of the film. If revisited I note particularly the comments of her mother when she explains that she is endearing, which would lend itself to being shown prior to the scene in the park. Another opportune moment for an interview response would be when the father talks about funding and all those who worked to help Justine get to the good place she is in. It could easily have led into the scenes at the school with the staff helping her. Some cutaways over the interviews could also benefit the piece, images that reflect the dark times of Justine's life and the happy place that she now finds herself in. She often observes the people around her and it intrigued me to know what she was thinking, how she analysed the situation. Commentary from her family may help offer an insight for the audience into the world of Justine.

It was a good attempt at film-making from Pratap Rughani that won me over mainly with the endearing nature of our protagonist. I'd quite like to know what happens to Justine in later life - but maybe with a little more thought into how best to tell her story.