The odyssey of “Odyssey”

Borne from the DC-based Make a Movie in a Month competition in July 2017, “Odyssey” is a short film that tells the story of Penelope, who attempts to get to her home in the suburbs via the Odyssey rideshare service. Part homage to Homer’s Odyssey, part celebration of the Washington DC area, Penelope instead winds up crisscrossing the city on a journey driven by the vagaries of technology and encounters quite the cross-section of fellow passengers along the way.

Wining 1st Place in the competition, “Odyssey” was advanced to the Wheaton Community Award category in the Wheaton Film Festival where it again won 1st Place in its category. Since then, “Odyssey” has been an Official Selection at the 2018 Maryland International Film Festival, won “Best DC Film” at the 2018 DC Black Film Festival, screened at the Skyline Indie FilmFest in Winchester, VA, and in October will be screening at the Glendale International Film Festival, the Baltimore International Black Film Festival and the Marina Del Rey Film Festival.

From the director

Life’s journey often plays tricks on us, sending us in a direction then throwing all sorts of obstacles in our way. This is the power of Homer’s Odyssey, as it provides powerful mythic analogs to many of the challenges we face not just over the years, but on a day to day, hour to hour basis – the adventures that constantly divert us from what we seek to accomplish in our daily dance of figurative birth and death.

“Odyssey” weaves this notion with the ever-present fabric of technology that permeates our modern life, allowing us to travel from destination to destination with an ease never before seen, but now hardly acknowledged.

I’m reminded of the story where an older fish is swimming alongside two younger fish and he asks them how the water is today, to which they reply, “What’s water?”

Indeed.

~Serge Delpierre