Stitched

Director: Lorena Lourenco

Producers: Naomi Sedgwick

East Coast USA Premiere

Country of Production: United States

Date of Completion: 2023

Duration of Film: 15 Minutes

Leela, a South Asian diaspora woman without a hometown or fixed identity, struggles to find love. A string of lackluster dates produces disappointing results. Upon learning that her former classmate, Kelly Kelley, is engaged to their childhood sweetheart, Leela decides to take action. Convinced that happiness lies in meeting the ‘right’ person—someone perfectly calibrated to her ever-changing sense of self—she decides to literally “frankenstein” together the ideal partner, Sai.

At first, the plan works. Over the course of a tricky dinner, Sai wins over Leela’s wildly different family and friends. But things nosedive when he demands that Leela start changing some aspects of herself to suit him better. They argue. Sai leaves.

Leela is distraught. Her sister offers some sage advice: that relationships aren’t built on compatibility, they’re built on patience, effort and compromise.

Leela doesn’t listen. Instead, she starts building a second, “improved” Sai. Before she can awaken the body however, she bumps into Kelly Kelley, now divorced mere months into her perfect marriage. Leela sees the woman she always envied struggling, and finally starts to understand that relationships cannot be gamed into success.

She returns to her apartment, and cuts the power to her experiment.