A musician father struggles to find cash to survive in Los Angeles.
OFF HOLLYWOOD is used with permission from Tatyana Kim. Learn more at offhollywoodfilm.com.
Misha Kim is a gifted musician from Kazakhstan who lives in Los Angeles with his two-year-old daughter. As he waits for his immigration paperwork to come through, he still must make rent, which he pieces together from various cash-paying jobs that help him and his daughter survive in Los Angeles.
But faced with high bills, unsympathetic roommates, childcare vagaries and a lack of empathy, Misha struggles to come up with the money he needs to -- and contemplates a personal sacrifice in order to stay where he is and pursue his dreams.
Directed by Tatyana Kim from a script co-written with Anatoliy O (who plays the lead role of Misha), this short drama straddles two kinds of iconic narratives. One is an archetypal "L.A. story," where beautiful dreamers struggle to find their place and success in the sunny but sometimes indifferent ecosystem of Hollywood. The other is the story of immigrants eking out lives in tenuous circumstances, summoning all their resilience and ingenuity to meet their challenges. Here, they're combined beautifully in a short that's both clear-eyed about Misha's difficulties and inspiring in his ability to keep going, despite all of it.
We first meet Misha in a recording studio, where he's translating between a Russian-speaking musician and a music executive producer type. At first, viewers could easily believe that this is a story about the musician and a slick kind of success. But the narrative chooses instead to follow the translator as he collects payment for his services and then runs up Hollywood Boulevard, feet racing over the famous stars on the sidewalk. Misha is late collecting his toddler daughter from daycare, and he has to take her to his next job picking produce. From there, the excellent and well-paced storytelling tracks Misha's increasingly strained efforts to earn money and find time to pursue his dreams of being a musician, interspersed with interludes with his daughter and at the crowded apartment he shares with other immigrants.
The visual mode is often naturalistic or even observational, presenting Misha's difficulties with an unvarnished sense of authenticity in a series of vignettes that reveal a different facet of his character and identity, including the dissonance he experiences being half-Korean with other Korean immigrants. But the visuals can turn lyrical, as well, especially when Misha shares a tender, idyllic moment with his adorable daughter. The overall impression being built is of a multi-dimensional person with many strengths and gifts, able to make his way in many contexts.
Through it all, actor Anatoliy O's performance is consistently compelling and thoughtful, a build-up of frustration coming through his character's restraint as Misha responds to the immediate obstacles in front of him, putting out one fire after the next. But what stays true is his belief in his dreams of a fulfilling life for him and his daughter, and the siren song of his own talent -- things that he's willing to work hard and make sacrifices for.
Absorbing and powerful to watch, OFF HOLLYWOOD only reveals Misha exercising his talent at its end, almost as if he's finally earned the time to do what makes his soul sing. But when we do see him finally play the drums, it's a pure moment of joy and release. We see what all the hardship and struggle is for: the fullest thriving of self and a triumph of human spirit, unfettered and free.