My Baby You’ll Be
About the Film
When Charles’ mother asked him to help her transfer home movies to her hard drive, his reaction was, “What home videos?” Watching the 20 hours of family memories and realizing he had 38 unopened voicemails — many from his mother—lead him to realize the extent to which the two, once so undeniably close, had grown apart. He realized, too, that with the videos and the voicemails he had the perfect media with which to explore the situation creatively.
“I watched every clip, end to end,” he said. “I cried, I laughed, and then I wondered, what happened? Why aren’t we as connected as we used to be?”
Many ask Charles about his mother’s reaction to the film. And the answer involves tissues and unconditional love.
“She urged me not to be so hard on myself!” and told him he’d been there for her and she knew he always would be.
The film has received accolades at Festival viewings around the country and received the UnLonely Online Film Festival Spotlight Award, selected by guest juror Mike Paseornek of Lionsgate Films.
About the Filmmaker: Charles Frank
We were thrilled to discover this young filmmaker. His cinematic grace and particular sensitivity to the qualities of distance, closeness, and yearning in our relationships to each other and to our larger communities were so striking that we selected three of his films for our festival, each of which captures a very different theme and aspect of loneliness and isolation.
Charles grew up in Western Massachusetts, in a tiny town a couple of hours outside of Boston. Recollecting his boyhood, he says “Besides making trick shot videos, I was a dishwasher for a summer and an avid member of the A2Z Yo-Yo Team. I studied in a rigorous academic environment and spent my free time making corny short films, and at 16 I worked on my first feature.”
After a gap year in Portland, Oregon, he planned to attend NYU Film School but ended up taking a position with a production company before co-founding Voyager Creative, a Brooklyn, NY enterprise with a range of corporate and personal projects rooted in documentary, verite approach.
I really like how this film makes me think of how even though my mother at times is waaaaaaay over-involved in my business, at the heart of her behavior is a love for me. I will miss that one day.