Happy Valentine’s day! Be sure to check out our love category if you want to settle in for some prolonged romantic viewing, but today I want to share a great new short film that came in through our submission process.

Moving Takahashi, is a slick, and well written short about young man, who, while moving furniture out of a posh LA home, unexpectedly stumbles upon the household’s daughter overdosing on pills. In perhaps a rare fit of conscience, he tries to help her.

A lot of the film is reassuringly familiar, with several recognizable beats. Romance is a genre not known for its startling originality, nor is it really necessary, at the end we just want the (gender neutral pronoun) and the (gender neutral pronoun) to wind up together. Moving Takahashi knows this and instead focuses on A+ execution.

LA-based Josh Soskin writes + directs, and the film is emblematic of the polished, semi-pro productions that come out of the area’s deep well of talent. Josh certainly has assembled some top notch collaborators. Financed by a successful Kickstarter campaign, the short is shot on lush 35mm by Rob Hauer, a fellow who joined Andrew and I on Filmmakers 25 New Faces of Film feature this past year and stars model turned actor Boyd Holbrook, who I would bet anything is a teeny bopper franchise waiting to happen. Soskin’s own script, written with Patrick James, is really quite deft, with a couple of good one-liners and believable interactions between the two leads.

The result is a welcome addition to the “bad boy” romance genre. If you like your romances with just a bit of edge, then Moving Takahashi will be a welcome 11 minutes for you.