Watch this beau­ti­ful short film about a father try­ing to find his son

Last year we pre­miered a short film by an up-and-com­ing film­mak­er named Char­lotte Regan, as part of Ran­dom Acts’ 2018 pro­gramme. Star­ring Neil Maskell, Lit­tle Mon­ster is a poignant minia­ture about a new­ly incar­cer­at­ed father who uses his one phone call to con­nect with his young daugh­ter back at home.

Since then Regan has been busy shoot­ing a num­ber of micro-bud­get nar­ra­tive dra­mas includ­ing the deeply affect­ing My Boy, which we’re thrilled to be able to share below. The film fea­tures anoth­er sea­soned British char­ac­ter actor, Sam Spru­ell, and once again explores themes father­hood and sep­a­ra­tion in a deeply human­ist manner.

“Daniel is a father des­per­ate­ly look­ing for his son,” Regan explains, ​“as he con­tacts a scat­tered group of fam­i­ly and friends, telling sto­ries and jokes where he pos­si­bly can, we realise that a heart­break­ing real­i­ty lies at the root of his search.

“I’ve always been inter­est­ed in the after­math of life chang­ing moments. The moments them­selves have nev­er inter­est­ed me – I like writ­ing about how char­ac­ters dif­fer in their cop­ing mech­a­nisms. My Boy came from that. It was at a time when I’d wit­nessed loss around me and had seen how dif­fer­ent­ly we all respond­ed to that. Maybe I’m just obsessed with sad dad stories…”

“I’d always want­ed to work with Sam Spru­ell. The char­ac­ter had to be some­one who was obvi­ous­ly in denial and had been dri­ven to that through des­per­a­tion, which I think Sam is amaz­ing at. The DP, Olan Col­lardy, was some­one I’d always want­ed to work with as well. And it was the first time I worked with my pro­duc­er Theo Bar­row­clough, who I bloody love and who I’ll hope­ful­ly be work­ing with forever.

“Right now I’m writ­ing my first fea­ture for the BFI and BBC with pro­duc­er Theo Bar­row­clough – who also pro­duced My Boy. It’s about a 12-year-old girl on a half-emp­ty, half-rehoused coun­cil estate that’s about to be knocked down to make space for fan­cy flats. Her dad comes out of prison and it’s the first time they’ve meet. I’m also ter­ri­ble at sum­maris­ing things. I’m also doing some TV stuff and reg­u­lar­ly annoy­ing mates with short films I’m try­ing to rope them into doing.”