Packing about as much as can be packed into a four-minute short film, writer/director Damien Kazan has created with Heritage an intellectually stimulating, emotionally resonant, and visually hypnotic short film that is described as a "tale of fathers and sons about the necessity of preserving childhood."

With extraordinary music by Jacob Cadmus, Heritage essentially wraps itself around one big question and asks that question, which should be experienced rather than simply published here, through its dialogue, visuals, music, and production design. While the film looks and feels universal, somehow Kazan has also crafted a film that feels deeply personal and intimate. It's hard not to feel like Heritage is a film that is processing life as it unfolds.

Heritage is a meditative experience, a film that feels on some level like it is an emotional response to life, to thought, or maybe even to trauma. It is a film that had me thinking and feeling as its visuals unfolded, snapshots of a life that unfolded, perhaps not as planned, yet also a life that makes one examine purpose and intention and a sort of universal commitment to relationship, to one another and, yes, to preserving childhood.

© Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic