Since the onset of a pandemic, Max has experienced the heartbreaking loss of his best friend – and the opportunity to explore a human connection for the very first time. Tonight, at the Cafe Cicatriz, he meets Lourdes, a kind and open-hearted seeker, with the hope that he may find the courage to reveal his true self and build a lasting relationship.

Director’s Vision for ‘Cafe Cicatriz’

Cafe Cicatriz came from the pandemic’s darkest days of uncertainty and despair. My daughter was 2 years old and the President was tear gassing kids at a church. I had a Google Sheets for our home rations and was getting targeted with banner ads for tactical pants. Most ludicrously, I worried that my utility as a storyteller wouldn’t be highly valued in our return to a hunter-gatherer society.
At the time, I wondered who in the world might somehow be okay at a time like this? Who might feel equipped for the disconnection and uncertainty?
Years later, while in Santiago, Chile to shoot a commercial, I met an amazing community of filmmakers who were excited to produce this story as a short film.

My 1st AD agreed to play our lead. His real-life girlfriend, Lourdes, became the film’s Lourdes. It was an extremely intimate, handmade film that helped exorcize some of the residual despair of those early pandemic days. We tried to make something that feels totally human; that treats ‘the other’ as a fully emotional person; and maybe inspires some pain and laughter.