Céline Roustan
Weiling is anxiously waiting to hear back from her petition to the San Francisco Housing Authority, as she and her two children are hoping for a chance to move out of their cramped single-room apartment to a bigger home. With Single Residence Occupancy, director Omer Ben-Shachar delivers a deeply moving family drama – a poignant slice-of-life narrative that immerses us in this family’s experience and surroundings.
“How do you make a home for your family, when the world you live in refuses you the dignity of proper shelter?”
Written by Belinda Huijuan Tang, Single Residence Occupancy grew from “a series of articles and photographs depicting the many Chinese immigrant families living jam-packed in Single Room Occupancy apartments”. Touched by how the photographs captured “families that were doing their best in minuscule rooms”, Tang was inspired to explore what it means to build a home in a place that doesn’t even offer “the dignity of proper shelter”. At the heart of her screenplay is a mother trying her best for her kids and striving for stability in a situation where always holding it together is almost impossible. Something, inevitably, has to give.
With the film set in such a tight space, immersing the audience in its location is crucial to enhance the emotional depth of the story, and be in that environment with the characters. So the SRO itself becomes almost the fourth character in the narrative, its confinements present on the screen throughout. Ben-Shachar explained that the team made the decision to shoot in a genuinely tight location, which production designer Katia Najera Viale transformed into a convincing SRO apartment.
While this production decision contributed to the authenticity of Single Residence Occupancy, the director candidly confessed that it actually “made the process much more difficult – both technically and visually”. With limited mobility and constant “dancing around the props”, blocking became a challenge. Yet cinematographer Wenting Fisher managed to find a way to build frames that complemented the emotional nuance of the screenplay rather than solely relying on tight coverage. The payoff is especially clear in the final image – which concludes the short so effectively.
“The real challenge was visual storytelling: how do we avoid falling into repetitive, tight coverage?” – director Ben-Shachar on shooting Single Residence Occupancy in such a tight location
Ben-Shachar already has a body of work that demonstrates his sensitive approach to storytelling – not just in the narratives he chooses, but also in the way he films his characters and puts the audience in their shoes. In Single Residence Occupancy, the way he lets us see Weiling’s world – from her own perspective – is particularly captivating. Through the subtle performance of Kathy Wu, the film communicates the deeper emotional layers of the story and of her character. With very few lines, she conveys the exhaustion, disappointment and weight of responsibility she carries, having to stay strong for her family – a quiet intensity that again makes that last scene all the more powerful.
Made while Ben-Shachar was part of Film Independent’s Project Involve program, Single Residence Occupancy has screened at multiple festivals, including the Atlanta Film Festival, where it won the Best Narrative Short Award in 2025 – making it eligible for Academy Award consideration and currently FYC. Ben-Shachar already has a new short on the festival circuit, Houston, We Have a Crush. Follow the film here to find out when it will screen near you.