Three minutes to break your heart and make you text that person you lost.
STRANGER is a coming-of-age short film that focuses on two neighbors reconciling before one of them goes off to college in Chicago. It is based on a true event that occurred the last day that I was in town before I moved to college. The two characters, Max and Cass, discuss their past together after not talking for years, realizing that they have changed as young adults and miss hanging out but cannot because Cass is leaving while Max stays in town to fix cars. With this last interaction, they get to say goodbye officially on a good note.
Acting
Williams and Pawlikowski pack years of history into loaded silences.
Direction
Chavez turns autobiography into universal ache—no fat, all feeling.
Writing
Dialogue that stings with the specific regret of almost-friends.
Director
Carmen Chavez
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Director Carmen Chavez cast herself as 'Mom Vocals'—literally the voice of her own memory leaving.
The Chicago/Illinois specificity matters: it's not 'college' as generic dream, but a real geographic severing of two lives.
US
