SB Live Action Shorts – The Knockout Game (Goalabre, 2014) : USA

Reviewed by Magali Vautrin. Viewed at SBIFF 2015.

 I had the great pleasure to assist to the screening of the SB Live – Action Shorts. There, I discovered 11 short films, made by several young directors from Santa Barbara. Some of them were amazing but the one that really got my attention is the Knockout Game by Benjamin Goalabré.

Benjamin Goalabré is French young director who graduated from the Santa Barbara City College in 2013. This same year, his first short film Paradise Cafe was accepted and premiered in the Canne Festival in France. A year later his second movie The Knockout Game written by Monique Rosario, which is inspired from real event that occurred in America, also premiered at The Cannes Festival. Both of his short film were officially selected to be screen in the “Short Film Corner” section.

A group of five restless adolescents pass the time playing “Knockout”, a brutal game in which the goal is to find an unsuspecting target and lay that person out with one punch. But as things get out of hand, what starts out as a game quickly becomes a matter of life and death.

“We thought it was important and interesting to try to understand why those young kids have done that, we wanted to understand where they were coming from”  explained Goalabré during the Q&As after the screening.

Compare to the 10 other shorts, this one was the one with the best cinematography, lights, colors. The director of photography Charles Doan, proved how good he is at his work and shot amazing footages.  This short film really has the looks of a featured film. The editing, by Cherie Hanson is amazing. Goalabré even offered himself the lux of a Guest star: Mary Wilson, one of the Supreme !

I was very impressed by so many young talented actors, directors (…) while watching those 11 short films. Beside The Knockout Game, the second film I will remind was Sisters by Hannah Pearl. She wrote , directed and acted in her movie. This young director made act her whole family in her short and the result was hilarious. A true comic short about two sisters that met in order to celebrate their father’s sobriety birthday and realize how they missed each other since one of them moved to LA.

Those two short were amazing, I recommend them.