Don’t be put off initially by the austere, quiet nature of Sky Hirschkron’s You Called Me, an endearingly sad little film about a young Japanese man bouncing between two girls over the course of a day. In some ways, it tells a tale as old as…well, at least as old as Some Kind of Wonderful and probably something older. But Hirschkron’s style is subtly devastating, constantly emphasizing the loneliness of the protagonist in a world where most of his communication is done through cell phones and instant messages. Indeed, notice how, as the film progresses, its protagonist begins to slowly vanish: first through the deterioration of the pixilated image as day turns into night, until we don’t see him at all in the final scene. It makes the one earlier scene where he interacts with another flesh-and-blood human being that much more powerful. Hirschkron also wrote reviews for the recently defunct Stylus magazine. He made this short in film school; we’re really curious to see what he does next. —Bilge Ebiri
