The Inbetween: Transition, Making Peace, and All That Comes with It

Theo Weierstall’s The Inbetween lets time and reality fold in on themselves as its protagonist—in a world between here and there after a terrible car crash—races to save his little sister in order to save himself.  With time running short before death takes him, confusing memories press upon him to yield to them, a potentially fatal distraction which also holds the key to life continuing. 

Mnemos (Elizabeth Broeder), goddess of memory in the in-between world, brings Ray (Kale Klein) and the audience up to speed as the film opens in medias res. To keep himself from dying, Ray has to go through all his memories. A curious entity with the appearance of an oracle armed with a clipboard, Broeder’s character is the only help—and it is limited—Ray will get as he navigates the rules of veering away from death. 

The film structures this opaque labyrinth as levels of a nondescript building, a choice in line with the corporate-esque practices of Mnemos with her clipboard and crumbs of useful information. Ray must go through each level and rush up to the next. Except, very quickly, he cannot. Drawn to the inexplicable absence and presence of his sister, Lina (Ava Mae Seidensticker), Ray instinctively abandons his task and follows the spectre of the little girl with the long hair and no words. 

Winding down into a surprisingly poignant allegory of the trans experience, the film’s casting of Klein is spot-on, whose somewhat shy, vaguely androgynous, strongly still coming into his own air complements the film’s theme of making peace with the past in order to birth a future. 

The Inbetween is about looking back even as you move forward towards life proper, not so as to remain stuck in a half-lived past, but to retain the appreciation for what was put to rest. 

Watch The Inbetween Short Film Teaser