THE SWEATER, 9min., Canada
Directed by Maziyar Khatam
Pressured into giving away his clothes, an emasculated young man obsessively attempts to reclaim his cherished sweater before it vanishes into the donation abyss.

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Get to know the filmmaker:

This idea has been bouncing around in my head since 2017: a guy donates his sweater at his girlfriend’s request, but his male friends make him feel inferior, so he decides to steal it back at all costs to prove his manhood. Firstly, it’s a comedy, but it was also important for the story to feel personal, delving into masculinity, self-worth, and the struggle for validation.

At the time, executing this film didn’t seem feasible from a budgetary perspective, especially with one of the key scenes being set at a donation center/thrift store. Our team had no finances to shut down an entire store, hire background extras, and shoot such a scene.

Years later, we had been discussing another idea that would utilize a more guerrilla shooting style. It occurred to us that we could shoot The Sweater this way as a proof of concept for our other more expansive project.

So we used hidden cameras and snuck into locations, which gave the film a voyeuristic and personal feel. The result was a bizarre hybrid of real people and actors fusing into a single narrative.

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