Synopsis: On the sidewalks of historically Polish Greenpoint, Brooklyn, J.J., thirty-something and living with multiple sclerosis, collides with his estranged father, Jakub, who’s sorting cans with raw, weathered hands. 

As J.J. studies his father from afar, found footage of a carefree boy running towards tangles of bright fabric replays in his mind. When the two men connect, Jakub gruffly resists vulnerability by clinging to his well-worn routine of redeeming recyclables. Despite J.J.'s chronic illness and 

memories of his fractured childhood, he follows his father down the block, persistent in seeking a small moment of connection. 

Later, nursing stoop beers and awkward conversation, J.J. recalls a childhood Christmas gift from his dad: a mattress printed with hot air balloons. The discussion of the earnest, but out-of-touch gift makes things awkward, giving Jakub an opportunity to shut down emotionally. But when he’s pressed by J.J. to continue engaging, Jakub capitulates, finally agreeing to meet the next day. 

That night, in his cramped apartment, Jakub drinks alone. As reality blurs, he's flooded with painful memories in a hazy collage of found footage; a child hugs the stomach of a man in an undershirt, a woman cries slumped over a table, a vodka bottle slams on a counter. 

The next day, Jakub fails to meet J.J. at their agreed location, so J.J. goes to his father’s apartment. Upon finding Jakub passed out, J.J. assumes the role of caretaker; he unpacks first aid supplies and cleans his father’s wounded hands. He lies beside his father on the same hot air balloon-print mattress from his childhood. J.J. silently reconciles with the complexity of his father’s humanity as his eyes close and found footage memories of past pain converge with potential for a new future in quiet, unresolved intimacy. 

Filmmaker Statement: The project, Redeemable Containers, is a hybrid narrative short that combines fictional storytelling with found footage from my childhood to create an impactful film depicting the shifting nature of a relationship between adult child and ailing parent. The story excavates my experience navigating my fraught history with my father as he declined from terminal cancer. 

This film explores the blurred memories that shape my earliest recollections of my father and the shortcomings I believed defined him. With this project, I’m examining how my experience of being an artist with a disability and chronic illness allowed me to start thinking of my father as a complex, whole person and provide him with the kind of care and tenderness he wasn’t always able to offer me in childhood. Like the film itself, the time I spent caring for my dad at the end of his life was often meaningful, sometimes disorienting, and ended abruptly. 

Redeemable Containers builds on my past work as I emerge from working “through” my disability to centering disability justice in films I make. I want to see more movies that acknowledge the complex reality of living in pain and it’s important that this film reaches other disabled or

chronically ill people both practically and on a deeper level. Ultimately, this film is a love letter to my Dad, to Brooklyn, and to the disabled community. 

-Collin Meath Writer/Director