In Alex Lanipekun’s short film Echoes, Andre (Ashley Walters) encounters an old classmate, Robert (Leo Gregory), who is now living on the street, as a trusted authority figure finally faces justice for the harm he caused to his students years earlier. Andre can’t shake the connection he feels to Robert, while his partner Eva (Nathalie Emmanuel) finds it hard to believe that no one even suspected anything back then.
Awards Buzz spoke with Lanipekun and Emmanuel, who made Echoes under the banner of their Rebel Island production company, about the casting of Walters following the success and popularity of Adolescence and the prominence of the current case unfolding at Cornell University. Lanipekun shared:
“It’s strange the way things conspire, as they say. We were very fortunate. Ashley is a wonderful actor and has been incredibly supportive and had his own journey with people close to him towards the project and the reason behind why he wanted to be involved. One of the other actors, Leo Gregory, who plays Robert, we were actually at school together and we hadn’t seen each other for many years and he actually had, I came to find out in the process of doing the film and preparing for it, his own story with that member of staff. His own very personal reasons for wanting to be a part of the film and that was something I had no idea about because of the silence around things like this. So it was a strange convergence in many ways where things came to the surface for me personally with people I’ve known for most of my life that we had just never spoken about before. It’s kind of emotional, isn’t it? Aside from just the awful reality of that, seeing how bold people are now, how defiant people are, the power that social media has given, the democratizing force of social media, as much as people say bad things about it, it’s really put a lot of power into the hands of ordinary people to speak out about on a myriad of issues. That can only be a good thing. We would never have heard of this story, but it’s worldwide news now! I think it’s the direction that we need to go in.”
Emmanuel championed this film as a way to make sure important conversations are indeed happening:
“The short really focuses on a system of power. I mean, this teacher is in a trusted position of authority and has care over vulnerable people and obviously you were talking about this specific case that’s happening very publicly now at Cornell, these systems of power that protect perpetrators and seem to harm victims and don’t seem to support victims. This is something that has been happening forever and is still happening and will continue to happen unless people speak up and speak out. We are storytellers and we told this one story that is encouraging people to speak up.”
Echoes recently screened at the HollyShorts Film Festival and has qualified for both the BAFTA and Oscar for Best Live Action Short.
