MANIFESTO | Omeleto

A woman discovers her husband's manifesto.


MANIFESTO is used with permission from Matthew Kic and Mike Sorce. Learn more at https://imdb.com/title/tt21941476.


Kylie and Ian are a happily married couple celebrating their anniversary soon. Ian is a writer, and Kylie arranges to have an older work from college made into a book for him. But in the course of preparing the present, she stumbles upon an old document on his computer, a manifesto that reads exactly like what a shooter would send out before committing an act of violence.

Kylie is disturbed by what she reads, and she can't reconcile the loving husband she knows with the angry, disturbed writer of the manifesto. The ensuing discussion opens up a rift between the pair, rocking a once solid marriage and surfacing even deeper fears in Kylie.

Directed and written by Matthew Kic and Mike Sorce, this intense, compelling short drama functions on multiple layers: it's a story of a wife discovering the depths of a husband's disturbing potential for violence in the past, exploring just how our past is carried into our present, especially when it comes to pernicious worldviews and actions. It's also an incisive snapshot of the moment a happy marriage unravels, as seemingly solid foundations reveal themselves to be much shakier and scarier than thought.

Shot in an anxiously handheld camera style and shadowy, cold cinematography that emphasizes each character's isolation and mystery, the well-written narrative is initially propelled by the wife's curiosity, making the storytelling more intimate and quieter at first. But the restrained tenor still builds considerable tension, as Kylie discovers an aspect of Ian's past that she wasn't aware of. It's a significant omission, one that might have changed the way Kylie saw Ian at the start of their relationship in college, and it begins to change the way she sees him now.

As Kylie, actor Jacky Park deftly conveys the growing disbelief, anguish and then horror as her previous understanding of her partner and her relationship collapses. Actor Connor Foster as Ian accomplishes a tricky balancing act of a performance. To Kylie, Ian must convince her and, by proxy, the audience that he's not disturbed anymore, bringing up questions about art and catharsis. But in the film's larger design, he must also cast enough doubt on his explanation to maintain the suspense and mystery that propels the film to its quietly disturbing ending.

By placing the discovery of Ian's past in the present of a satisfying marriage, "Manifesto" poses powerful questions of just how much of Ian's disturbed, violent and toxic thinking was youthful angst, mental health challenges, cultural and social conditioning or perhaps simply character. In the end, we and Kylie don't truly know, leaving her in what amounts to an emotional cliffhanger -- one that shrouds the couple's fate in uncertainty, and perhaps even Kylie's safety.