Backflip: Bearing Witness to a Hero’s Journey Towards His Father

Lee J. Ramirez’s Backflip is a 19-minute half drama half rap mockumentary about a young man haunted by his father’s legacy. With no one to accompany him on his journey to self-actualisation, Jerome finally finds affinity with the one other person who could know what it is like to bet it all on one momentous second. But the road to those dual feats is laid with bruises, betrayals, and a general abundance of tests of resilience.

The story begins with a betrayal. As if on a stage, two friends (Sam “Lanks” Thompson, Michael Lee) encourage Jerome (Emmanuel JD Simon, also the screenwriter) to step into courage, into the glow of his dead father’s legacy as a gymnast, and overcome the grief and fear that has haunted him since that father’s death. But Jerome is far from ready and the friends far from true. Cameras at the ready, they wait for Jerome to make a fool of himself, and when he does, they whoop and cheer for the attention it will fetch them online. Then they exit.

Thus with bitterness compounding his long mourning, Jerome embarks on a mission to correct the failure in this first humiliating instance. The decision crystallises at the end of a rap sequence featuring Jerome’s mother (Sonia Audrey Ferreira) and fourth wall breaks. With a camera of his own—whether to reclaim its function since the opening scene or to garner attention of indifferent strangers himself—Jerome returns to the scene of the crime. It bookends a long training montage, but without the comfort of a mentor, doubling down on Jerome’s isolation from the larger world. In fact, the film puts in a second round of fourth wall break here to drive home the impression of his aloneness—separate from his own diegesis, Jerome turns to the audience to bear witness to his toil.

Backflip takes a languid pace, using its runtime to cover a relatively short list of plot points. The emphasis is on Jerome’s characterisation as a young man who struggles with his inheritance. The conflicts they spark within him, expressed through rap, are relatable even without a dead father or for that matter, a dead gymnast father. It is a play on the hero’s journey, undertaken without a mentor or help, and only distantly buttressed by the emotional support of a mother intimately familiar with his loss. But even with a mother and the hope of a watching father, Jerome is alone, and it is this fundamental aloneness that stays with you. After all, there’s only one hero.

Watch Backflip Short Film