13
S8mm + 16mm short film 13 min, USA, 2024
concept , director, cinematography, film editing Evelyn Lee
casting Migi Fabara, Nancy Fabara, Alfonso Sanchez HL, Finn Gilbert, Anthony Alvarez, Maddie Hazouri, Brendan Sloan
prop master XIAO | sound mixer Thenea Sun | assist Thenea Sun, Alexander Kans | poster + pattern design, exhibit printing 蘇子齊 Tzuchi Su


13 began in 2022, following the death of my grandfather.

Can we feel our lives beginning to fade? As death approaches, do we recognize that our own life is coming to an end?

The project began as a personal response to loss—an attempt to understand mortality, memory, and the ways the dead remain present in the lives of those they leave behind. As I moved between cities and cultures, the film gradually took on a life beyond my grandfather’s death. The people I met, and the brief moments in which our lives intersected, became part of a broader reflection on absence, connection, and what it means to be alive.

Rather than trying to explain death, 13 looks at what loss does to the living: how the absence of one person can reshape another person’s relationship to time, the body, and life itself. Making the film became a way for me to live alongside what I could not fully understand—and to find a place for grief within a life that continues.

All footage for 13 was processed at Metropolis Post in New York.
The film premiered on April 12, 2024, at the Meyerhoff Gallery in MICA’s Fox Building.