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Writer-Director Henry Alexander Kelly On The Power Of Video Games And The Afro-Latino Community In Debut Short ‘Chuck And Fern’ — LA Shorts Film Festival


Writer-director Henry Alex Kelly talks to Deadline about his debut short at the LA Shorts International Film Festival

Making its world premiere at the Oscar and BAFTA qualifying LA Shorts International Film Festival on Friday, the short follows the story of two video game characters, Chuck (Lorena Jorge), a D-List villain, and Fern (Mateo Mpinduzi-Mott), a happy-go-lucky Link inspired swordsman as they face an existential crisis when they learn that the child playing their game is facing some tough times at home. And a lot of the movies and things that inspired me, like Taika Waititi, who has this beautiful way of putting so much comedy, fun and heart into these very heavy subject matters from Boy to Thor: Ragnarok. “Oh, we have a sock puppet and googly eyes that’ll be entertaining and carry that message across.” The challenges for Chuck and Fern were like, OK, I want to set it in a video game forest.

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