Short movie Eggshell profitable film festival course at Sayonara’s – director Ryan William Harris’ first work, coproduced between Italy and Ireland – will soon be finished, collecting since 2020 more than 20 awards and more than 70 selections on a national and international level – latest award being Best Short at 2022 Serbia International Youth Film Festival.

The vivid and inventive world of a child’s imagination works in this movie in order to downsize the reality he lives in, made of immense grey areas mirrored in the suburban sky and far from the big cities physical and mental wiggling. Irish suburbs harshness leads Joey to protect himself wearing a self-made robotic head, which supports him on the battlefield of the juvenile bullying condemnation and of making experience of adult situations ahead of time. The wallflower spends his afternoons after school in solitude, in his imaginary open-air playground, between science fiction plans and the desire to project himself onto the ideal of a strong and brave combatant, able to defeat the enemies disturbing his tranquility. In fact, Joey would like to make himself invisible while facing other children’s oppressions, whom being a little older feel entitled to vent the shared frustration caused by a home brokenness on him, but in a violent way. The only person being his complicit in the daily struggle is his mother, a very young woman herself and therefore unprepared for certain life challenges, who nourishes her son’s very hope of being able to protect both from the evil perpetrated by the external world.

But the eggshell fragility defending their family nucleus is challenged by the umpteenth abuse and the two, defeated, will have to eventually escape from the risks of a merciless reality – while Joey will also be obligated to abandon the comfort and hope of his child imagination due to the harsh clash with the untreatable hostility of the adult world.

Chiara Bardella