My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To (2021) w/Godspeed (2020)
Director: Jonathan Cuartas Run Time: 90 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 2020
Starring: Ingrid Sophie Schram, Moises L. Tovar, Owen Campbell, Patrick Fugit
Country: United States
Language: English, Spanish
“Somewhere between “Let the Right One In” and “Martin,” Cuartas fuses mythical horror with familial drama for a heart wrenching exploration of vampirism as disease”
About the film:
Winner of a Special Jury Mention at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival and the New Direction Competition at CIFF 2021.
Dwight and Jessie are at odds over caring for their frail and sickly younger brother Thomas, who can only live on human blood. The increasingly dangerous task of keeping him alive weighs heavy on Dwight, but Jessie will stop at nothing to keep her family together.
About the filmmaker:
Jonathan Cuartas is a Colombian-American filmmaker from Miami. He began storytelling through homemade comics before pursuing a degree in film. He screened his thesis film Kuru at Palm Springs International Shortfest, and his next, The Horse and the Stag, won Best After Dark Short at Indie Memphis. Jonathan is a 2019 Sundance Knight Fellow.
Crafted with his brothers Michael as cinematographer and Rodrigo as production designer, My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To is Jonathan’s debut feature.
Godspeed, a short film from Columbus-based filmmaker Hope Madden, will accompany the feature presentation. Filmed to make the most of pandemic constraints, Godspeed is a snapshot of how we create our own narratives to help us understand and justify our own behavior.
Her son is on the other side of the country. So is his girlfriend. You can be supportive from 2000 miles away for only so long, and this mother has hit her breaking point. Now Mom is finally on the road and there’s no telling what she can convince herself to do to get this person away from her son.
“This nasty little tale deserves to be the audition monologue for a whole new generation of aspiring actors.”
– Alli Hartley for Morbidly Beautiful