A young girl copes with her mother's death by rediscovering their love of space.


OUT OF ORBIT is used with permission from Jess Kay and Dann Emmons. Learn more at https://dannemmons.com.


Esme is a young girl whose mother has passed away recently. Though her father is in the picture, he is frozen in his grief and depression. Esme is essentially on her own to navigate the loss, and she is lonely and sad. But when Esme rediscovers her and her mother's mutual love of space, Esme gets an idea -- one that might offer the relief that Esme needs in her sorrow and pain.

Directed by Jess Kay and Dann Emmons from a script by Kay, this short drama is a quiet, tender and moving portrait of a young girl's attempt to deal with her grief. It takes a delicate, hushed approach to portray raw emotional terrain as it enters into a child's subjectivity with respect and wisdom, offering a unique and well-crafted portrayal of grappling with a terrible loss.

There's very little dialogue in the film and also minimal musical score at the beginning, all of which underscore the emotional aridity and hollowness of Esme's world and state of mind. Through thoughtful visuals and editing, we know that Esme is now motherless, especially as she observes the other kids at her schools being picked up by their mothers. We also see careful details that Esme's father, too, is immobilized by grief and does not know how to reach out of his pain to help Esme. The minimal, naturalistic approach is effectively poignant, placing viewers right in the void of the mother's absence and her father's emotional immobility in a pared-down, non-judgmental way.

Eventually, however, Esme finds her way back to the spaceship project that she and her mother were working on. The narrative shifts here, fully entering into the world of a child's imagination and its naive, direct attempts to reach hopes and dreams. Rendered still in the film's melancholic naturalism but with the presence of a richly lyrical musical score, there's a charm in Esme's attempt to reach and join her mother in the heavens above. Young performer Amira Macey-Michael does beautifully in her role, playing Esme's emptiness and quiet bewilderment with subtlety and understatement. Seeing Esme feel hope again is touching, though we know as viewers that the gap between her and her mother can't be bridged in this world. But when Esme comes across one last "transmission" from her mother, it begins to fill the cracks in her aching heart.

Deeply moving and tenderhearted, OUT OF ORBIT is ultimately a testament to the depths of a parent-child bond, and how love endures, even in death and sorrow. It's also a tribute to a child's resilience, and how innocence and imagination can help us grapple with loss and mortality. Despite her mother's absence, she has found a way to remind Esme how deeply she is loved. And while there's no way to avoid grief, that reminder of love gives Esme just enough to move forward.