Dances With Films Short Feature Review: ‘You Are Here’

Written by Emily Auskaps

Lehi Falepapalangi as Peter Kleebold in Michael Frieberg’s YOU ARE HERE.

It’s easy to slog through daily life with little thought given to the worlds outside our own. After all, modern life is busy and filled with mundane tasks, everyday responsibilities, and a myriad of ways to distract ourselves should we happen to become bored. One could easily avoid pondering on the larger picture without difficulty, and to be fair, our world is filled with such worrying news on a daily basis, the desire to fold safely inside one’s own world is completely understandable.
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Every day, life throws at us a litany of small annoyances and frustrations. There are daily demands placed upon us that can leave us little energy to attend to anything else. One can become so absorbed simply getting through the day to day that life can begin to feel bleak and gray and stuck. But that is never permanent because all it takes is a single spark to set us free, as we see in You Are Here.

This film finds a middle-aged gentleman, Peter Kleebold, amid yet another day behind the desk in his insurance office, half-listening to a phone call, when he comes across a headline on the day’s paper: our Milky Way galaxy is now known to contain more than 250 billion stars. In an instant, his mind is blown, and his world flipped upside down. He is at once having an existential crisis, one that sends him seeking answers far afield.

Sometimes less really is more, as evidenced by this moving film. For it does harbor a brief running time. But what it accomplishes in that time, is supremely impressive. Because it manages to take us on an engaging journey that features so much depth, and so much incredible meaning, and that is likely to inspire anyone who watches to take a new look at world around them and invites them to find the simple beauty in the world, and universe, that surrounds us all.

This lovely film features stunning cinematography and a features a powerful message about the transformative value of getting outside the bubble of one’s own life; how we never know what catalyst will lead to a shift in perspective or a new sense of purpose. For that is one of the grandest and scariest parts of life, that we never know what any given day will bring and what changes lie ahead, but the more open we are to embracing life as it is, the richer it can become.

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