Butler native heads to Cannes
‘Caroline’ stands as only American short film in competition among eight finalists
Celine Held travels the world in her work as an actress and filmmaker, and wherever she goes, she looks for people in black and gold and says with delight that she discovered a Steelers bar in Kathmandu.
On Thursday, she leaves for France and perhaps the most exciting adventure of all — the short film “Caroline,” co-directed and cowritten with husband Logan George, is the only American entry among the eight eligible for the Short Film Palme d’Or, the highest prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
The finalists were chosen from 3,943 entries.
When they walk the carpet in Cannes — Mr. George in a tuxedo and Ms. Held in a light blue Carolina Herrera gown — the three Texas siblings who starred in the film, with Ms. Held as their mother, will be with them.
“It’s all so crazy!” said Ms. Held, who grew up in Butler. “We submitted in December and we hadn’t finished our color yet, but we know it’s better to submit as early as possible so they have time to watch as many times as they can before they make a decision.”
When the call came, the couple had just returned to their home in Brooklyn from Qatar, where they had spent a few weeks filming a commercial.
“We found out the day before they announced [she begins to get giddy at the thought]. I get a lot of spam calls as everyone does, and I see a call from France, and it’s like, ‘Why?’ ... It’s been so exciting. Just awesome.”
The three children — Caroline, Brooks and Sally Falk — were ages 6, 4 and 1 when the film was made. Ms. Held lived with the family for several weeks before the shoot in Texas.
“So I was able to work with Caroline and craft her character from the inside out, being an actor in the movie, while Logan could work with our director of photography,” Ms. Held said. Mr. George edited the 12-minute film. “Working with Logan, I just trust him absolutely,” she said. “He and I are on the same page. In our commercial work, we work as a two-person crew a lot of the time.”
The filmmaking couple has had works in more than 200 film festivals, including South by Southwest. Last year, they were picked among 25 “New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker magazine. The article commented on their “dizzying array of work, from commercial spots to artistic passion projects,” including “Mouse,” which it described as a “stomach-wrenching, Trainspotting-esque blast about a desperate, strung-out couple who try to use a dead mouse to scam a canned beans company.”
That was before they heard the news about Cannes, “obviously the biggest deal of all,” Ms. Held said.
Their first call was to their parents. Ms. Held, who attended schools in the Knoch school district and Vincentian Academy growing up, was a theater kid from the start. She recalled her mother, Belinda Held, driving her all over “all those trips to Act One Theatre School” in Shaler.
She left for New York University and met her husband, a fellow drama major, and the pair have built a career doing international commercial work for nonprofits and schools and, for just the past couple of years, researching hard topics and turning them into short
and feature-length works through their company, ELO films.
Their works often have women and children as their core characters.
In “Lockdown,” for example, shot in Pittsburgh last year, a 14-year-old girl who is struggling with feelings for her best friend “stages a perfect plan.” It is in submission at several festivals.
“Caroline” is based on three true stories of mothers whose children were taken from them while they were trying to make ends meet.
“In one instance, a nursing student in Florida had a 3-month-old baby and she had a final exam, but all of her child care possibilities fell through,” Ms. Held said. “The exam was 20 minutes long, and she left the baby sleeping, with air conditioning on.” A “good Samaritan” realized the baby was alone and the mother was arrested and jailed.
Ms. Held found similar stories in Texas and Arizona, with mothers facing impossible choices due to a lack of child care.
“That’s what the film is kind of commenting on, told through the perspective of a 6-year-old girl,” she said.
The filmmaking duo is attracted to stories of people living on the edge and on the fringes of society. The characters exist within a gray area — in the case of “Caroline,” you get to see multiple sides of the situation.
The short film competition at the 71st Cannes festival begins May 15, with the winner crowned May 19. The other films come from France, the Philippines, Iran, Poland, Japan, China and Australia.
The trip to Cannes will mean a brief timeout for the hardworking Ms. Held and Mr. George. One of their larger projects is the featurelength film “Little,” about a 5-year-old who grows up living in the tunnels beneath New York City. Like “Caroline,” it is based on a series of true events.
“We are interested in making films that champion stories that aren’t normally told,” Ms. Held said. “And we are interested in making films that we will be happy and proud to show the next generation.”