Ivan Kander
As the title so plainly suggests, Steven Rico’s Every Day My Dad Dies is a film about dealing with the ostensible, never-ending pain that comes with the loss of a loved one. That in and of itself might not be the most intriguing description—as I’ve said time and time again, grief is a topic that inspires many short films, yet few ever really excel. Often, they feel overtly sentimental or too constructed. Fortunately, that’s not the case here. In fact, Rico’s film goes for the opposite approach. It’s naturalistic and raw—so much so that it’s practically experimental. This isn’t a short concerned with plot or conventional narrative. Rather, it comes off almost as a cinematic tone poem, exploring sadness, anger, and, yes, grief in a way that feels introspective and real.
It’s impressive how effortlessly Rico gets us inside the head of his protagonist, a teen wrestler. There’s lots of stuff here that in a more conventional, Hollywood-esque film, would feel cheesy (a son trying to win the big match for his dying father, for instance). But, Rico never lets the film ever drift in that direction. In fact, he actively avoids those sort of telegraphed moments, focusing on the other, less palatable, less “camera friendly” aspects of grief. The result feels introspective and personal. Most impressive, it does this without any substantial use of dialogue (i.e. there is no “win one for the gipper, monologue”). Rather, we as audience members are only privy to snippets of ancillary conversations. The Dad’s death hangs on our lead character like the weight he is so desperately trying to lose. Needless to say, the film is ripe with this sort of strong symbolism, all of which would feel ham-fisted in a lesser film.
“The film is autobiographical and is based on events that happened in my life.”
Considering how well Rico wordlessly captures the essence of grief, it should come as no surprise that this is a deeply personal film for him. Communicating via e-mail he explains further:
“I was trying to make a film that I felt represented the way I remember things happened when my father passed away. It was such a blur of emotion and there was so much going on that I honestly couldn’t remember the order of events, just that they all had happened. So I set out to make a film that conveyed the emotion of that time in my life in an attempt to connect with my audience as well as a final catharsis relating to the subject matter.”
Rico shot the film on super 16mm film over the course of 7 days in his hometown of Miami florida. It played a few select festivals across the country and was just granted a Vimeo Staff Pick upon its online release. As for his next projects, Rico is working a glam-rock-werewolf-musical written by his sister (yes, you read that correctly). He’s also attempting to secure funding for his next short film entitled, Klaus and Maxine Have Sex.