Underplayed Gems

Detours Ahead

Detours Ahead poster
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

More films like this

How it feels

A woman retraces a childhood road trip across Canada. She processes her grief while facing obstacles along the way.

reflectivemelancholiccontemplativequietbittersweetslow-burnpersonalgentle

What happens

Detours Ahead is a Canadian animated short film, written and directed by Esther Cheung and released in 2024. The film depicts a woman retracing a childhood road trip, processing her grief as she deals with the various obstacles that get in her way. In an interview when the film was screened at the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival, Cheung described the film as having been inspired by two cross-Canada road trips she took, driving from Vancouver to Toronto on her own and then driving back to Vancouver with her father later the same summer, and noting the significant differences in how she was perceived and treated by other people when she was alone compared to when her father, an immigrant from Hong Kong who still has a significant accent, was with her. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.