A young actress goes to an audition.


ALONG CAME A CALLBACK is used with permission from Jason Ishmael Echols. Learn more at   / jason_echols  .


Audrey is a struggling actress trying to make it in Hollywood, but she's down on her luck and reaching her breaking point. But then her agent calls with a mysterious lastminute audition, which Audrey prays will be the one that will change her life.

But when she gets to the audition, she realizes she knows the writer, Noah. They used to date, in fact, but their relationship went south after Audrey suddenly breaks up with him after a very bad day. Years later, she and Noah reencounter one another at the audition one that leads to a chain of events where Audrey must confront the mistakes of her past.

Directed and written by Jason Ishmael Echols (who also plays the role of Noah), this short romantic dramedy is a sharp, funny but sincere portrait of a woman who must confront her past. Filmed in a straightforward, bright and hightoned look, the film is on the longer side for a short film, but it takes advantage of its length to build out each main character and their relationship.

We open with Audrey having a meltdown, screaming in frustration but then getting a call from her agent about a lastminute audition. It quickly and economically establishes Audrey as a struggling actor who has yet to get a break in Hollywood. But when Audrey enters the audition, she realizes the writer of the project is her ex, who she abruptly broke up with two years earlier.

We see their past relationship in an extended flashback, showing Audrey and Noah both struggling with their aspirations and also perhaps with their very different personalities. Frustrated with everything and perhaps taking it out on Noah, she breaks up with him after a very bad day. But years later, Noah is set for revenge: he's now "made it" in Hollywood and arranged an audition for Audrey to show her he's succeeded and subject her to some humiliation and rude, demeaning behavior.

Things don't go as planned for both Noah and Audrey, and the rest of the film explores the fallout of both that brutal dumping and the subsequent revenge. Actor Catherine Lidstone isn't afraid of the knottier, thornier parts of Audrey's personality, playing the full dimensions of a smart, ambitious and outspoken woman who keeps hitting obstacles, no matter how hard she works. Echols plays off her well as Noah, whose affability and humor are both charming but can come across as not taking very much seriously.

As their story unfolds, ALONG CAME A CALLBACK reveals that it's not interested in teaching its characters a lesson or figuring out who is to blame. Both Audrey and Noah are flawed people with different experiences and memories of the same events and relationship, and both have done mean things to one another. Instead, they give one another grace and forgiveness, even as they bicker to the end. Grudges however justified or understandable have kept them stuck in different ways. Letting them go, hearing them out and allowing the other person their version of the truth finally lets them move forward.