The After (2023)

David Oyelowo anchors an assured debut that captures the lonely reality of life after tragedy.

Misan Harriman’s Oscar-nominated short film stars David Oyelowo as Dayo, a successful London executive whose life is shattered after witnessing a devastating act of violence involving his family. A year or so later, he’s now working as a rideshare driver and struggling to connect with the world around him, constantly confronting the reality of his situation, one which most of us couldn’t even begin to imagine.

This is Harriman’s directorial debut, and it uses a bustling London as a backdrop that effectively amplifies Dayo’s inner grief, juxtaposing a father’s worst nightmare with a setting that never seems to allow time or space for grief. In the opening scene, we see Dayo bringing his daughter, Laura (Amelie Dokubo), to a dance recital, where they meet her mother, Amanda (Jessica Plummer). Within seconds of their meeting, we witness the tragedy and spend the rest of the film with Dayo as he goes about his mundane life.

The short time spent with Dayo and Laura provides enough proof of a loving relationship between father and daughter to ensure we feel Dayo’s shock and devastation, and it’s hard not to be reminded of Charlotte Wells’s superb Aftersun (2022), with which Harriman’s short shares some DNA.

Even without reading a synopsis of The After, there is a sense of foreboding from the outset, with a haunting yet beautiful piano score playing fleetingly in the background as Dayo dances with Laura, filling you with a palpable sense of fear that never truly leaves until the film’s conclusion. When we join Dayo a year on, he’s alone in his car listening to voicemails; we learn he’s missed four crisis management meetings in a row, and from the car radio, that his family attacker has been convicted of murder.

Written by John Julius Schwabach, The After is a piece that understands that grief isn’t something a person simply moves past. In the case of Dayo, it’s difficult to really establish what’s going on in his head beyond a blank struggle to come to terms with what has happened. Oyelowo is brilliant; once tipped to be the new James Bond, here he’s traversing the streets of London in a way that couldn’t be further from the offhand attitude of 007. He says very little; instead, the script focuses on what the passengers in his car are saying, mundane and trivial everyday problems that Dayo can only wish for.

Despite London’s vast and seemingly endless reach, Harriman secures a terrible sense of claustrophobia as we join Dayo in his car, which has become his own sort of living coffin. He’s alive, but he’s hardly living. It’s an efficacious contrast to the sun-drenched and colourful open-air entrance to the film, and when we reach the end, it’s difficult to ascertain just what Dayo is feeling. But in the film’s final sequence, a young passenger appears to literally grab Dayo’s grief from him, adjusting the chemical imbalance within him. It’s a finale that leaves much to the viewer’s interpretation, and as Dayo leans out of his car window, his face only half covered in shadow, one can only guess. But that’s arguably the point; grief never comes full circle, and you’re always living a slightly different life after it.

It’s a hugely confident and assertive debut short, and while it isn’t perhaps the most subtle portrayal of tragedy and grief, it will be fascinating to see what Harriman does next. ★★★½ 7.4/10