By Alex Silverman
Nacho Ros’s Without a Map is about a young girl called Rebecca who falls in love with the classic story, Alice in Wonderland. Just like the main character of that story, Rebecca falls down a rabbit hole of her own. This one is a rabbit hole of real-life human struggles. Rebecca struggles in school. She loses people who are close to her, and she nearly attempts to take her own life. Despite all this, she ultimately realizes she has friends that will help and support her along the way.
The production value of this short film is very strong. The main character is interesting to follow, and you sympathize with her story as time goes on. However, this film’s biggest issue is that there are no subtitles which can cause some confusion for viewers especially since they may not be familiar with the cast and crew’s native language. For those that do watch it without knowing the language, they are left with picking up visual details of what is happening. They can see that the main character likes Alice in Wonderland, they can see she is struggling in school, and they can see that she is dealing with heavy burdens.
I give this film 4 stars for its story and its characters but it does need subtitles so it can appeal to a wider audience.
Alex is a recent graduate from Columbia College Chicago with a major in Comedic Writing & Performance and a minor in Writing for Television. Apart from his work as part of the Planet Classroom Network Film Selection team at CMRubinWorld, he served as a screening panelist intern for the International Children’s Media Center, a sketch writer, and an on-set production assistant at the 61st Annual Chicago/Midwest Emmy Awards.
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