The Waking Dream

Remnants follows Isaiah, a twelve-year-old boy caught in a recurring dream: a quiet field of tall grass where a girl stands with her back turned, always just out of reach. In waking life, his family moves through the strain of an ordinary evening: dinner on the table, his father eating in silence, his mother's voice sharp with worry over a son who keeps drifting off. But an empty chair sits at that table, and Isaiah cannot stop staring at it. When he finally admits he doesn't love the spaghetti everyone insists is his favorite, the room goes still, his parents' eyes sliding toward that empty seat.

The Onset of the Void

In his room after defiantly refusing his dinner, Isaiah presses his ear to the door and catches his parents' hushed argument: his mother is at the end of her patience, his father passive; a name slips between them: Dani. Once the house goes dark, Isaiah creeps into his sister's bedroom as if a routine, a room left exactly as she left it, trophies dulled with dust, clothes still on the floor. He lifts her old camera from the shelf, climbs into her bed, and presses play, sinking into footage of the two of them laughing and tangled together in a field of grass.

The Breaking Point

Isaiah falls asleep inside that memory and wakes to find his mother frozen in the doorway, shaken to see him there. Her grief comes out as anger, and she orders him out. Something in him finally cracks open, and he says the thing that has been sitting underneath every silence in that house. He storms out, leaving his mother alone with the camera in her hands, forced to face what she's been avoiding.

The Shared Reality

Isaiah ends up back beneath the tree from his dream, and the field slowly reveals what it's really been. His mother arrives with flowers in hand and sits beside him. For the first time, she lets herself speak about her grief, remembering the day her daughter was born and the promise she made to protect her, then admitting she felt that same fierce love the day Isaiah came along. Isaiah tells her, simply, that he misses his sister, and finally lets himself break down in her arms.

Resolution

His mother holds him the way he always wished she would. She looks him in the eyes and declares her love for him; those words are almost foreign to Isaiah. Isaiah and his Mother embrace; a breeze flows by. Dani's presence is a whisper in the wind. The duo faces the world with newfound strength, the remnants of their past now making their relationship stronger.

Why Us, Why Now

In the Black community, grief is too often expected to look like strength. Keep your head up, keep moving, don't let anyone see you break for too long. That expectation lands hardest on children, who rarely get the room to mourn without also being told to handle it well.

Remnants came from wanting to show what that grief actually looks like when it isn't performing composure, the anger that stands in for tears, the silence that stands in for conversation, and the tenderness underneath both. It's a story about a Black family that doesn't have it figured out, where a mother's love and her grief come out sharp before they come out soft, and where a boy is allowed to fall apart without being rushed toward "moving on."

The Cast and Crew of Remnants refuse the idea that healing has a timeline, or that strength has to mean anger. This is a story worth telling with care.

Visual Inspiration

LookBook

Director's Statement

Remnants began as a reflection of my younger brother. Writing Isaiah meant looking closely at what it might feel like for him to carry grief at that age.

These characters are precious to me. Isaiah, Mama, Dani- they aren't just names on a page; they carry pieces of my own family, my own understanding of what it means to grieve. Telling this story honestly, without rushing past the hard parts to get to healing, matters to me deeply.

I want to make this a film worth telling.

How to Support Us!

Your donation is the best way to support our film. Your money will fund transportation, food, accommodation, and much more to make this production both comfortable and enjoyable for the cast and crew.

Even the smallest donation makes a difference, even more so if you share our fundraiser with friends and family or follow us on our Instagram @Remnants_ashortfilm

Thank you for your support!

Remnants Team