Can't Close a Painted Eye

Walking home through the forest, Inez stumbles onto a scene she cannot make sense of: Carmen, bleeding, sitting among the scattered limbs of broken mannequins. What follows is a strange, darkly funny encounter between two women, one wounded and one unsure whether to help, flee, or stay and ask questions. Canadian filmmaker Suzette McCanny writes, directs, and appears in this eight-minute short, which balances unsettling imagery with an offbeat comic sensibility, treating its woodland tableau as both a mystery and a meeting. Emily Coutts and Sheelagh Darling round out the small cast. Playful, eerie, and deliberately ambiguous, it is the kind of miniature that rewards a second look. Presented as part of Queer Quickies 209.