Short Term 12

Grace (Brie Larson) works in a foster home for at-risk kids. She has to deal with troubled teens, break-outs, her own pregnancy, her latest charge, Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever) and Marcus (Keith Stanfield) who is preparing to leave the facility on his 18th birthday.

Winner of the Golden Rock at the Little Rock Film Festival, Narrative Feature and Narrative Audience awards at SXSW Film Festival, Narrative award at the Los Angeles Film Festival, the Tony Cox Award for Best Screenwriting at Nantucket Film Festival, with lead actress Brie Larson winning Best Actress at Locarno Film Festival and the Rising Star award at Maui film festival, Short Term 12 comes highly praised. Praise that it deserves.

Surprisingly effective, Short Term 12 (Destin Daniel Cretton‘s first feature film) features some great performances from the younger actors and gives the adults some meat. At times a little too saccharine, and some stuff gets lost in the mix (Marcus’ story is infinitely more affecting than most of the other tragedies, and new guy Nate (Rami Malek) brings nothing to the table) but that is to be expected of a debut. It’s strong, carefully paced, with interesting characters and a stellar performance from Larson. Also, Stanfield is definitely a guy to keep an eye on, he’s got a bright future ahead.

@ShortTerm12, @stanfield_keith, @BrieLarson89, @ItsRamiMalek

Donal O’Connor