If Ever

A dream. A nightmare. A fire brings destruction but, as with all loss, a possibly rebirth. But its this sense of of loss, especially as a child, that can hardly be imagined. One needs to learn the language of letting go. There's denial, resistance, and grief, but also the unexpected joy in saying goodbye.

When a long-anticipated wildfire approaches, a young girl is faced with evacuating her beloved home. Unable to fathom the scale of what’s to come, she journeys throughout her neighborhood as she follows an old man who doesn’t intend to leave. They make their way to one final place, a gathering place for the entire community. It is here that she experiences the love of a place, and the inevitability of needing to let go.

Director’s Statement

I grew up in the greater Los Angeles area, where the premonition of the “Big One” loomed large. It referred to an inevitable earthquake. But floods, fires, droughts, and apocalyptic narratives of all kinds have made their home here—made all the more surreal by the daily promise of sunshine. And year after year fires have become all the more normal. From the occasional school closures as a kid due to falling ash to the now nearly yearlong threat of fire in our backyard. It’s a fact of life. I’ve been evacuated from my parents’ home four times. I have friends and acquaintances who have lost everything. The scale of destruction across the state is hard to grasp, yet we carry on, as if it won’t happen to us. There’s a cognitive dissonance in trying to live a normal life while knowing disaster is inevitable. And yet all this destruction is magnetic. We watch it from the safety of our homes. Fire, especially, draws us in—the flicker, the warmth, the light. This film looks to the all-too-human dimension of loss while exploring scientific themes of environmental and ecological change. It dives into the obsessive psyche of an adolescent who is trying to find her way through an all too uncertain future. This story begs us to face head on the impermanence we live with daily. There are no rose colored endings. But we can’t go through it alone. Only through letting go can we move forward. And if we are to move forward, it will be together.

This film was written and developed months before the destructive wildfires of 2025 that swept through Los Angeles. It was produced just months after with an entirely new perspective.

An AFI Conservatory Thesis Film