Light of My Life

A film set in a world after a pandemic. A disease spread ten years ago. Almost all the women died and those left are treated as a danger. A father and his daughter live in the woods. They stay in a tent, do not enter towns, and speak to nobody. The girl is eleven. Her hair is cut short, she is dressed as a boy, and her father calls her Rag. The film opens with a long conversation. In the tent he tells her a story, and that section runs nearly ten minutes. From there the film is a story of running. An abandoned house, a barn, a town, a group of men and a railway line. The father teaches his daughter rules. How to speak, how to walk, when to be quiet. The girl asks questions. Why she is hiding, what her mother was like, and why they are always leaving. What the narrative is interested in is not catastrophe but parenting: the film does not explain how the world came to this; its real subject is what to tell a child and when. There is almost no violence. The narrative carries the threat not as something shown but as a possibility constantly felt. The pace is very slow and deliberately so. The scenes are held long, the dialogue is not cut, and music is barely used. The mother's line is in flashback. Her falling ill is shown in pieces and those sections are the film's most affecting. Casey Affleck wrote, directed and played the father. Casey Affleck, Anna Pniowsky and Elisabeth Moss are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes quiet, character-led films set after a collapse. Who it is not for: anyone expecting incident; the narrative runs close to two hours and very little indeed happens.