Zachary Leipert

When his slasher-fiction novel manifests in real life, hack writer Rian Burman has to finish his story without getting his protagonist murdered by a seriously sadistic Stalker who will stop at nothing to have her.

A grandfather struggles to understand his grandson’s sexual identity. The tension builds as a consequence of their conflicting emotions. Their dialogue has a brutal tempo, a staccato that mirrors the characters’ own discomfort. As in his still photographs Michals deftly orchestrates the effects of multiple exposure using the technique to convey the complexity and emotional resonance of a charged situation. The actors’ words imply one thing, while beneath their dialogue exists an empathy they are unable to articulate.

The Sorcerer Invents the Universe