Holding on When Everything Changes

Read Time:5 Minute, 8 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Holding On When Everything Changes
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Genre: Autobiographical, Documentary
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 6 minutes
Director(s): Quoc Huy Tran
Where to Watch: shown at the 2025 Art is Alive Film Festival

RAVING REVIEW: PRETEND I EXISTED is a deeply personal short that understands how memory becomes its own kind of storytelling — fragmented, emotional, shaped as much by feeling as by facts. In just under six minutes, filmmaker Quoc Huy Tran reflects on his relationship with his mother during her cancer treatment in Japan, capturing the fragile space between fear and love that emerges when illness alters the roles of parent and child. It’s a film built on reflection rather than drama, and that restraint gives its core remarkable strength.

Autobiographical films often walk a delicate line — too much sentiment can feel performative, while too little can keep viewers at a distance. Tran’s approach finds a meaningful middle ground. He lets honesty guide the narrative. There is no attempt to polish the experience into lessons or inspirational clichés. Instead, he offers an intimate recollection of a time marked by uncertainty, vulnerability, and the desire to be enough for someone you love.

The title alone holds weight. Pretend I existed — a phrase that can speak to the fear of losing presence in someone’s life or the terror of being forgotten entirely. Illness can blur identity, turning relationships into medical routines and emotional triage. Through this film, Tran emphasizes the importance of remembrance. He ensures that those moments, even the difficult ones, are recognized and acknowledged rather than lost to time.

The short finds power in simplicity. It doesn’t rely on elaborate staging or heavy-handed metaphor. Instead, it centers on human proximity — small physical gestures, glances, and moments that define connection when words fail to express it. The camera feels like an observer, documenting love in its most fragile form. We don’t need background exposition to understand the stakes. Every frame conveys that there’s much more beneath the surface than the runtime can fully explore.

Cancer stories are often shown through the perspectives of caregivers or doctors, but this one belongs to the child trying to make sense of a shifting relationship. The film respects that emotional complexity. When a parent becomes fragile, their child is forced to navigate a role reversal before they’re ready. Tran handles that shift with grace, emphasizing understanding over shock value. There’s no manufactured spectacle — just a sincere tribute to the quiet heroics embedded in care.

With such a brief runtime, every second matters, and the pacing reflects that awareness. Transitions feel like memories flickering into place — selective, imperfect, yet vivid. The editing mimics the way people think about difficult periods in their lives: with clarity in some moments and haziness in others. This structure reinforces the personal nature of the story, reminding viewers that they are witnessing something private, something not meant for pageantry but for preservation and understanding.

The sound design and narration work together to reinforce the reflective mood. Words aren’t overused; the film allows silence to express love and fear where language falls short. Silence in real life often carries the most weight. PRETEND I EXISTED understands that emotional truth. What rises from the short is a profound sense of gratitude. Not just for recovery or resilience — though those are noble outcomes — but gratitude for having shared time, love, and presence. The film serves as a form of documentation to ensure that those moments survive the erosion of memory. The filmmaker turns personal pain into a bridge for others to cross into understanding.

As a contribution to the Art Is Alive Film Festival, the film feels especially appropriate. It celebrates artistic expression rooted in lived experience. Tran uses cinema not to escape reality, but to honor it — to protect something that might have otherwise slipped away. It reflects the festival’s mission to uplift independent voices who create from the heart, not from commercial expectation.

If anything, the short leaves viewers wishing it were longer, not because it feels incomplete, but because it feels so meaningful. There is clearly more to this story — more reflection, more relationship, more history worth exploring — and the impact of this short suggests that Tran could expand this work into a larger piece if he chooses. Still, the film’s brevity becomes part of its emotional DNA. Sometimes the most significant memories arrive in flashes, not full chapters.

PRETEND I EXISTED is both a tribute and a declaration: a tribute to a mother whose strength was tested by illness, and a declaration that their love will not disappear into silence. It invites viewers to hold their own loved ones a little closer, to preserve the stories that shape who we become. In under six minutes, it achieves a fullness of heart that many feature-length films struggle to reach.

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[photo courtesy of UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, SYDNEY]

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