Never Forget (2018)

Directed by: Sarah Veltmeyer | 10 minutes | short film, drama | Actors: Nola Kemper, Richelle Plantinga

Who says you have to have done the Film Academy to make it as a director? At least not Sarah Veltmeyer (1988). After she was rejected from the Film Academy, she initially wanted nothing to do with film and threw herself into a career as a DJ. After a few years, her blood started to creep again and she wrote and directed her first short film, ‘Gotta’, in 2015 under her own steam. A year later, partly thanks to a financial injection from the Netherlands Film Fund, she was able to produce her second short, ‘Kiem Holijanda’ (2016). With this short film shot in Kosovo, Veltmeyer was very successful at the Berlin Film Festival, where she won the Crystal Bear for ‘Best Short Film’ in the ‘Generation 14+’ segment. A wonderful stimulus for this young talent, whose latest short film ‘Never Forget’ (2018) has been included in the programming of NTR Kort.

In a setting that is reminiscent of Sean Baker’s ‘The Florida Project’ from 2017 in terms of atmosphere and theme, in the almost ten-minute long ‘Never Forget’ we follow two teenage girls (Nola Kemper and Richelle Plantinga) on a sweltering hot day. They are bored and decide to bully the brother of one of them, who is having sex with his girlfriend, by throwing frankfurters at the couple making love. The boy is furious and locks the girls up on the balcony of their gallery flat. Luckily they have their cell phone with them! The boredom, the scorching sun and the hormones make the friends quite agitated, especially when their boyfriends send horny messages. The beer found on the neighbor’s balcony also plays a role, of course. The boys wonder when the girls are coming to the fair, but the girls have nowhere to go. And while one of the two tries her hardest to find a way to get off the balcony, the other actually thinks it’s such a safe idea that they can keep those excited boys at a distance. Because they talk a lot tougher than they actually are. At least that applies to herself. But then something happens that she hadn’t anticipated: if the girls don’t come to the fair, the boys will come to them.

With an aptly sketched atmosphere and the right language, Veltmeyer knows how to set the right tone. Girls of about fourteen or fifteen often act as if they have already been through a lot and know exactly how the world works. Deep down, however, they are often still children and behind their big mouths hides a small heart. They are right in between childhood and adulthood. We discover an extra dynamic as soon as it turns out that one girl is not as far along as the other. Because of course she shouldn’t show that (she thinks herself). Without giving too many details, Veltmeyer manages to sketch the different characters of these girls and so they are brought to life in just ten minutes. The two lead actresses appear very natural and pull us into their world with conviction. Behind the fast tempo, the rich color palette and the brooding tone there is more depth than you think at first glance.