My name is Juan Carlos and I am a film director from Mazatlan currently studying at the Savannah College of Art and Design. My team and I are excited to announce our latest production – In Her Absence – a deeply personal short film about grief, memory, and the quiet, destructive ways we cling to what we’ve lost.

It follows Diego, a young man trapped in his apartment, clinging to fading memories of his lost love, Elise, through photographs kept in a wooden album she once gave him. Diego tears out the photos, smokes them, and lets the memories wash over him — reviving moments and places that now exist only in his mind. When the album is finally empty, he is forced to venture out to retake these pictures, only to find that the past is gone — and the only person left to see clearly is himself.