Dead Weight
Shorts Block 1: October 31 at 3PM
Synopsis
Funded in part by the George R.R. Martin Screenwriting Competition, Dead Weight is a thriller filmed in New Mexico.
Grace (ALEXANDRA RENZO), a solo female backpacker, unwittingly survives an apocalyptic event while in the wilderness. She resolves to live out the rest of her numbered days in peace until she encounters Aaron (GRIFFIN NEWMAN), a fellow survivor with a very different philosophical take on the end of the world.
Runtime: 15 minutes
Content Advisory: This film includes depictions or themes of violence and murder.
Directed by: Virginia Root
Virginia Root is a writer and director from South Jersey living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One time, as a kid, she was so determined to beat a neighbor boy in a foot race, she ran straight into a parked car. She lost a front tooth and won the race.
More recently, she won the 2024 George R.R. Martin Screenwriting Competition with her sci-fi pilot Deserters, received a grant from the non-profit New Mexico Writers, and became a Stowe Story Lab fellow in the New Mexico New Voices program. Virginia’s original pilot scripts, The Sisters Morrigan and Deserters, were second-round finalists at the Austin Film Festival in 2021 and 2023, respectively.
Virginia is a Telly Award-winning commercial director; the spot she wrote and directed for the New Mexico Summer Food Program was awarded a Silver Telly in 2025.
She is currently writing and developing her first feature film.
Dead Weight
Shorts Block 1: October 31 at 3PM