Triage / Short Narrative / Canada

Triage
For Gemma and James, a simple car ride to the vet escalates into a full-blown crisis, exposing hard truths beneath the surface of their relationship. Set in the early days of the pandemic, TRIAGE is a claustrophobic pressure cooker and exploration of who we truly love when our worlds fall apart.

WRITER / DIRECTOR / EDITOR
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David Rendall is a Toronto-born artist and filmmaker in Picton, Prince Edward County.

He is currently in post-production for a short animated documentary about the holocaust in Romania called 'Today Is A Gift' (funded by the Ontario Arts Council).  https://www.instagram.com/heliographpictures/​

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​Director Statement

My vision for TRIAGE was to make a social realist drama with a cinéma vérité documentary feel that responded to the claustrophobic and isolating conditions of the pandemic in Ontario. In particular, I wanted to convey a sense of confinement and pressure on a young couple by setting the film inside a van for nearly the whole story. I also wanted to displace speaking directly about the virus, instead communicating about a couple’s concern for their ill cat. The film asks questions like - how much would you be willing to sacrifice to save your pet’s life at the vet? but also about the larger difficult choices we made in the pandemic. The term ‘triage’ refers to a system that sorts the order of patient care in a larger crisis in order to maximize the number of survivors. This system was employed in the pandemic, and the film is about the conflicting views of each character’s crises during this state of emergency.