Tags: Short Film, Video
You might recognize actor Paul G Raymond on his turn in Black Mirror, as the member of an AI space crew battling against the whims of a power-tripping nerd in “USS Callistter.” His latest short film “Descendants” offers a different perspective on the millennial milieu – in which friends with benefits are de rigueur and your boyfriend watching gay porn is just another quirk of the bleak dating scene.
Raymond plays Adrian, a hapless twenty-something in love with his hookup buddy who doesn’t reciprocate his feelings. His sister Viv, played in messy-bun glory by Nimisha Odedra, is dealing with her own newly-discovered relationship problems and refuses to be his shoulder to cry on. The next 10 minutes are full of humorous run-ins that hit way too close to home.
Raymond told Kajal over email that he wanted to play a romantic lead but that’s not the role he gets cast for. So he wrote “Descendants” to scratch the itch and shine a light on his specific experience.
“I think the general feeling of being an extremely privileged second-generation South Asian person and comparing it to my parents’ much more challenging, adversity-filled lives was a big inspiration for the short,” Raymond said. “That dichotomy can be really interesting and funny, though I think can be quite debilitating in a second-generation person’s formative years. I’m also highly prone to romanticizing things, I think that’s the unifying element of Descendants.”