Parental Alienation Awareness Program 2021
In 2021, Hollywood Silver Screen Festival host a special Program to bring public awareness on parental alienation. Parental alienation is what happens when a parent (or someone) maliciously brainwashes, influences and/or manipulates a child against the other parent, often in a bitter separation or divorce, in an effort to destroy the sacred parent-child relationship. It is a covert form of child abuse and domestic violence. Parental alienation is often misunderstood as a high conflict custody battle caused by both parents but in reality, only one high conflict individual is the cause. Parental alienation leaves devastating consequences in the alienated children and parents.
In 2021, with Victim To Hero Institute, the Hollywood Silver Screen Festival hosts a Special Program to bring public awareness to parental alienation. The Special Program invited submissions of films, videos, and commercials in all genres and lengths that bring awareness to parental alienation. The program was free to submit and selected films are available for the public for free viewing from April 25th to May 9th 2021.
We received submissions from 614 films, with total run time of 276 hr 7 min, from 86 countries, in just about as many languages. The submissions were diverse in project types, presentations, and genres. We received short films, feature-length films, animation, drama, action, horror, black and white, color, silent films, and so on. From the pool of submissions, we selected 13 films to showcase for the festival.
OFFICIAL SELECTION
1st Place Winner: Heaven Beneath My Feet, directed by Sandra Madi
Heaven Beneath My Feet is a feature-length documentary film featuring true stories of three Lebanese mothers’ struggle to preserve their rights to the custody of their children. The children have been kept and alienated from the mothers by the fathers. The system failed and played the key enabling role in alienation.
2nd Place Winner: Seven Years Minus Ten Days, directed by Hamid Noori
Seven Years Minus Ten Days is a short film about an Iranian mother who is prevented from seeing her son despite her custody rights According to the Iranian laws, children’s custody automatically goes to the fathers when the children turn 7 years old. Her ex-husband makes sure that she does not get to see the child even though the child is not yet 7yo but he doesn’t care enough about the child, leaving the child exposed to abuse.
3rd Place Winner: Esperando a Nico (Waiting For Nico), directed by Octavio Maya Rocha
Esperando a Nico (Waiting for Nico) is a short documentary film about a loving father’s longing for his son who he has not seen for 7 years since the marriage breakdown. The father joins other parents in a movement to bring awareness and fight against the broken family court system.
Honorable Mention: The Dead Flowers of Spring, directed by Pol Sanchez Mas
The Dead Flowers of Spring is a short film about an alienated mother rebuilding her relationship with her daughter after the abusive father died. The film showed the father alienated the mother, telling the child that the mother is not capable of raising the child. The child fled the family to have her own life but mentally was never free from the haunting voice of the controlling father.
Honorable Mention: As Long As the Heart Beats, directed by Przemyslaw Kopacz
As Long As the Heart Beats is a black-and-white art film depicting what’s going on in the mind of an alienated child. She feels imprisoned by the father who figuratively kills the loving mother and prevents them from having a relationship. She struggles to break free.
Desire, directed by Miguel S. Martin
Desire is a short film about an alienated father’s desire to see his child, despite the alienating mother and the court interference. We see the alienating behavior in the mother when she throws away the birthday gift that the father bought for the child. We see a loving relationship between the father and the child in collages of photos of the past.
Dear God: A Story Of Black Boy Joy, directed by Vincent J. Walker
Dear God is a short film about an alienated child struggling to grow up without his dad. The film shows the mother screaming to tell the father to go away, then tell the child that the father abandoned them and not being around. The child struggles but the raises above all of it.
Homecoming, directed by Giulia Cermelli
Homecoming is a short art film depicting an alienated child, terrorized by his mother’s voice in his head, repeatedly telling him how his father was not good enough, and he will also be like his father and will never be good enough.
A Trial Before Monsoon, directed by Shubham Sanjay Shevade
A Trial Before Monsoon is a story of a father using his terminal illness to guilt his daughter into being his lawyer to help him divorce the child’s mother. (On a minor note, the daughter has left home for some time to live alone. She carries with her the narrative that the mother is controlling and unbearable. We hear the father promotes this narrative but the only interaction we were shown between the daughter and the mother, we saw a loving and caring mother. So it is possible that the child’s impression of the mother was created by the father.)
One Second, directed by Tom Vogel
One Second is a tragic story of how a mother uses the daughter as a weapon to punish the father for his affair.
You’re Not Bloody Useless, directed by Alexander Pearson
You’re Not Bloody Useless is a short documentary featuring an interview of an alienated child who is now an adult, reflecting on the fear and the pressure that was placed on him by his father to reject his mother. He caved to the pressure and did not talk to his mother for 30 years. This led to severe depression and many other struggles in his life.
Fortunate Son, directed by Craig Douglas
Fortunate Son is a short film about an alienated father’s struggle in a fight against a parental alienation child abduction case. The child abuduction led the alienated father to commit suicide.
Dear Mom, directed by Danilyn Ifversen
Dear Mom is a short film about a daughter who writes a letter to her mother everyday ever since she was told by her father that her mother abandoned them. The daughter and her brother later discovered the truth about the father’s jealousy of their love for their mother and the extent he goes through to destroy their relationship with the mother. While it is clear that this is a debut film for a young filmmaker, we applaud the filmmaker’s effort.