Sheltered Life

(Canada, 2008, 80 mins)

HDCam

EXEC PRODS: Andrew Koster, Dr. John Laudan
PRODS: Lori Lozinski, Carl Laudan
COPROD: Kryssta Mills
SCR: Katherine Schlemmer
CAM: Steven Deneault
ED: Carl Laudan
Cast: Valerie Buhagiar, Natasha Greenblatt, Jaren Brandt Bartlett, Eve Harlow

To outsiders, Josephine Nash (Natasha Greenblatt) and her mother Candice (Valerie Buhagiar) live a life of comfort and opulence- with tennis lessons, designer clothes, and a perfectly manicured garden. But on the inside, their home is falling apart. Following a domestic dispute, Josephine makes an anonymous call to the police, landing herself and her mother in a chaotic women’s shelter in what seems like the middle of nowhere. At first the two feel their marked difference from the other women, but they soon come to realize that keeping up appearances isn’t necessary in a place where only shreds of hope are left to hold onto.

Forced to look beyond the surfaces of their fellow ‘inmates’, Josephine and Candice form unlikely bonds with others at the shelter. Josephine quickly forges a strange friendship with teenaged Kendra (Eve Harlow) and Cal (Jaren Brandt Bartlett), and together they try to make sense of their circumstances in a secret but flawed Utopia- in a broken down VW van. After watching her mother unravel, and Cal being forced to leave the shelter, the usually composed Josephine can no longer contain her emotions. The result is a confrontation with her mother, herself, and her father, whose fated intrusion on the shelter sets up surprising conclusions. In Sheltered Life, director Carl Lauden’s feature debut, chance encounters make way for profound connections and dark personal truths to surface amidst chaos, confusion, and tragedy. 

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