Nurse.Fighter.Boy

Colour, 35 mm
Canada, 2008, 93 min
EP – European premiere
Section: Another View

Synopsis

Originally from Jamaica, Jude is a single mother of a 12-year-old boy named Ciel. She works as a nurse at a hospital. Jude and Ciel live for each other, and Ciel knows when his mother doesn’t feel well; he’s even found his own method of protecting his mom from bad things. A former boxer, Silence is past his prime and he now only competes in illegal matches in order to make ends meet. One evening he is injured and Jude treats him at the hospital. Although almost no words are spoken at their meeting, a bond is established between them, and a mere week at the end of summer is enough to change the lives of all three. In this successful and unostentatious writer-director debut, the filmmaker has managed to capture the feelings of love, disappointment, sorrow, as well as hope, which life brings not in words, which are unimportant, but through images and music. The director was aided in his efforts by friends and members of his family.

About the director

Charles Officer studied visual art at Cambridge and communication design at OCAD. He first worked as a graphic designer and then later attended New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse. Then he began acting for theater, television, and film. The first short movie he directed, When Morning Comes, was shown to acclaim at the 2000 Toronto IFF. Short Hymn, Silent War followed in 2002, first screened at Toronto and then Sundance. He began working with Ingrid Veninger on Hotel Vladivostok and Everything Is Love + Fear; she later produced and cowrote his debut feature Nurse.Fighter.Boy. In 2007, the Berlinale selected Nurse.Fighter.Boy to participate in the Sparkling Tales writers lab. Officer is currently shooting his first documentary.