The Birthday Gift was directed by Arianna Ortiz and stars Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel, Paula Pizzi, and Ignacio Serricchio. The film is based on Stephanie Alison Walker’s full-length play, The Abuelas, which premiered at Teatro Vista in Chicago in 2019. – Gregg W. Morris reviewing.
What follows should provide insight into why this reviewer was blown out of his seat. On the surface, the film looks deceptively simple in its early scenes. A convivial birthday dinner celebration between a mother, Soledad (played by Paula Pizzi),…
The Birthday Gift is based on the play “The Abuelas,” written by Stephanie Alison Walker. Adapted for the screen by Stephanie Alison Walker and Paula Pizzi, and directed by Arianna Ortiz. Director’s Note (Arianna Ortiz) Welcome to Soledad’s birthday dinner.…
What’s It About This beaut directed by Kyra Bartley and created by the global charity Made By Dyslexia was designed as a deliberate campaign to “hijack search engine algorithms. That is, the filmmakers specifically named the film after the commonly…
The Famous Who Have Spoken Publicly About Having Dyslexia Or Are Widely Documented As Being Dyslexic Albert Einstein — Often associated with dyslexia, though historians debate whether he was formally dyslexic. Tom Cruise — Has discussed struggling with reading as…
BY THE ROOTS is an intrepid and necessary work: Queer cinema rooted not in stereotype or market trend, but in lived complexity. Memory, survival, embodiment, and the difficult labor of becoming whole resonate throughout the film. Audiences that value intimate, fearless independent filmmaking: BY THE ROOTS shouldn’t be missed.
Emily Robinson — The Central Protagonist (Madison Young surrogate). Robinson plays the film’s primary point-of-view character, a young woman navigating identity, sexuality, and artistic self-definition. The role is widely understood as a fictionalized stand-in for Madison Young herself, tracking her…
Revised April 10, Friday, 2026 An amazing short film that will make many in an audience feel like they were guests of an intimate full length film. So damn good that I can’t help but imagine, perhaps, that Director Lee…
## *A FRIEND OF DOROTHY* (2025) **Written & Directed by Lee Knight | Short Film | 21 minutes** The Story *A quietly beautiful short film about an unlikely friendship between Dorothy (Dame Miriam Margolyes), a sharp, witty, and increasingly frail…
Synopsis Desperate to maintain their lifestyles as their youth, & options, fade, two aging sugar babies dive headfirst into the bizarre underworld of the “desire economy.” When a provocative new app called Daddies Boi promises fast cash and fresh connections,…