The Heart review: Barack Obama’s daughter makes promising directorial debut | Hollywood

Malia Obama’s short film, The Heart, is a strange little creation. The Sundance Film Festival, now in its 40th year, is instead a suitable platform for first-time filmmakers, providing space for many actors-turned-directors. Jesse Eisenberg and Lucy Lawless this year are a few names to start this conversation. In this league, Obama is not a starter. Obama is the 25-year-old daughter of former US President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama. She previously worked with the Swarm writing team and also accumulated internship experiences on the HBO series Girls and at the Weinstein Company. His short film The Heart still finds this meditative place in the festival here. (Also Read: Girls Will Be Girls review: Richa Chadha, Ali Fazal’s debut production portrays a complex mother-daughter relationship)

In the short films section, The Heart immediately stands out, extractive in its approach but quite sober in its theme. Credited here by her middle name Malia Ann, her film revolves around a lonely man named Joshua (Tunde Adebimpe), who leads a solitary life with his mother (LaTonya Borsay). Little is revealed about their dynamic, but they share an eerily silent dinner in front of the television one fine evening. Once he’s done, he goes upstairs to take a shower. In the next few minutes, his mother will suffer a fatal heart attack.

Joshua becomes a knot of unsaid words and ponders guilt, as he is informed of his mother’s wish to carry her preserved heart as part of the will. He will also meet a stranger on the street who looks like his mother and will tell her what he has not been able to say all this time. It’s a small scene shot in close-up, which little by little gives way to the first time where he gives access to his underlying melancholy. Where will Joshua return? Did he abandon the pot containing the heart? Will he find a new place? These are some questions that are cleverly left unanswered as Obama brings down the curtain.

It is perhaps the director herself who is best able to speak about the place where her film originates. In the Meet the Artist video shared by the Sundance Film Festival page, Obama gave an overview of his film and said it was “about lost objects and lonely people and forgiveness and regret, but I also thinks he’s working hard to discover where tenderness and closeness can exist in these things.

The Heart is a confident, assured directorial voice, revolving around this specific, tight dynamic of parental love and neglect. Yet in more ways than one, The Heart is also emblematic of larger, more pressing questions about belonging and expression. Joshua may speak freely now, but he can also understand why he couldn’t do it when he wanted. This choice has now become his.

Santanu Das covers the 2024 Sundance Film Festival as part of the accredited press.

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