Because imagination lives in a grey space of acceptance.

In A Case For Coping, Maya, deals with the loss of her mother by choosing to retreat into her fantasies. As a hard-boiled detective, she recruits an imaginary informant to help figure out if her mother has simply gone missing, much to the dismay of her grieving grandfather, playing the role of weary police chief. Together, they reopen Mom’s “cold case” which forces them both to admit the one truth they’ve been dodging: grief doesn’t disappear simply because they want it to.

So why am I telling this story now? Because too much pressure is put on kids to “prepare for the future.” My goal is to remind audiences to breathe and give them permission to retreat into their own imaginations. Playing make-believe is not a childish hiccup. It can be a recipe for healing or, at the very least, stress-testing reality.

While filming, it was important that the idea of blurred reality came through in the story, and showed visually across each scene. We filmed using a Sony Venice wearing Cooke anamorphic lenses, which allowed Chicago’s alleyways to slip into dreamscapes. Locked-off frames give way to handheld whenever Maya’s fantasy fractures.

Tonally, I’ve always loved the emotional and visual stories of Korean dramas. From Lee Chang-dong’s Burning for its slow fuse tension, and Bong Joon Ho’s Memories of Murder for its uneasy humor and raw emotion. It’s also hard to ignore the influence that Cary Fukunaga’s True Detective (S1) had on this production for letting scenes breathe while dark thoughts creep in.

A Case For Coping was an incredible exercise in collaborating with a talented team of industry veterans while working with incredible actors across Chicago to bring this amazing short to life. I’m incredibly proud of the result while working within the constraints of indie filmmaking.