A new filmmaker is on the rise in Campbell River.
Julian Ciumac, a Grade 10 student at Timberline, is debuting his short film, "The Letting Go," in a private screening at Landmark Cinema this month.
The film follows Christopher, a young teen haunted by a disturbing dream of the void, pushing him to confront his existential dread regarding life and death.
"This kid, just a normal kid, hangs out with his friends... he goes to bed and wakes up, except he dreamt nothingness, not just nothingness where you just go to bed and you wake up and don't remember. It's nothingness like a void, and what that void represented is his existential dread of nothingness after death," Ciumac says. "He's scared by this. He's just a young kid, and he kind of goes and searches for answers."
The runtime of the film is around 10 minutes. It includes six main cast members and only two crew members, including Ciumac.
While there won't be a public screening, Ciumac plans on submitting the short film to movie festivals and hosting it on YouTube.
Filmed over the summer, Ciumac used a cinema-line Sony FX30 to shoot the film in 4K.
"It's just recommended as the best small beginner filmmaker camera, and it is," said Ciumac. "I don't know why they say it like that because it's just amazing. It's been an amazing tool for me to film with because I was doing all my stuff on my phone."
The young filmmaker had YouTube channels when he was younger, often using his phone to film different things he saw other people doing. It wasn't until Grade 9 that he started taking it more seriously after taking a media course. In the course, he made four short films with random groups of his classmates.
"I think I kind of found that awaking," he described. "This is actually like really fun. I really like to do this. Like every aspect of it, not just the acting or not just being behind the camera. I kind of liked all of it."
Ciumac and a partner travelled to Abbotsford for a provincial Skills Canada competition while he was in Grade 9. The duo qualified for the provincial competition after winning gold in regionals. They came in second place after being tasked with making a documentary-style film about electronics. They shot the whole thing on an iPhone and a "crappy mic" that "was just kind of dangling there."
He said everyone else in the competition was Grade 11 and 12 students with equipment worth around $1,000.
"Despite the odds, my Grade 9 partner and I got second because it's not the gear. It's about how you use the gear. That's how I see it."
The teen is keen on going to school and studying film.
"I think it's just a valuable course to take because I think you can learn a lot, and from what I've heard, it's helped people in their careers, especially big-time directors. Like a lot went to film school, and they learned how it's actually out there," Ciumac says. "I think that's my plan right now. To get into film school after high school."
