OFF
healing – andShort film – 2026
Dir: Mary Stracke
DoP: Haider Zafar
Resonance Productions
Grief is often experienced in isolation. OFF is the short film we’re making to bring awareness to that. It sits with the silence that follows loss, the messy middle between pain and healing - and it tells the truth most films skip.
The concept
“Absence is a noun that refers to the state of being away from a place where someone is usually expected to be, or the total nonexistence and lack of something.”
In OFF, my challenge was how to transmit to the audience the feeling of missing someone while also helping them to connect concretely with this person who has been missed. In this case, it was Ben, an artist. We can meet Ben through his studio, his day-by-day life and his art. Each corner is filled with his absence, where his loved ones revisit their relationship.
Colour Palette:
Dealing with themes like death and grief is never easy; the film has an emotional tone but is also very delicate and sensible.
The location was a blank-white photo studio, which allowed me to create his environment from scratch. While I’ve incorporated the neutral shades and natural color from the materials like canvas, and wood, I also brought a warmer tone in the crafts and more "meaty" colours… I wanted the human, in flesh and bones, to be present there.
In the script, Ben was a person enduring depression, so his art was a mirror of his internal world. Due to this, I used black, greys, B&W photographs and monochromatic palettes.
The Process:
Mari, the director, wanted a naturalistic general tone focused on the actor’s performance.
At the family home, the happy moments together decorate the ambience along with toys and baby stuff. A small piece of Ben’s work is also displayed on the walls.
When creating Ben’s studio,, we wanted to show the person behind the artist: the unfinished painting, the mismatched coffee mugs, the family pictures, his favourite music, the tasks never completed on the wall, bills, that little chaos of our quotidian life.