A young boy sets off on an exciting journey to right his father’s wrongs in the short film Little Imp by director Weiyang Liu.
Sometimes, short independent films arrive at Screen Critix headquarters that just make us smile. Sometimes they have stories filled with love. Sometimes they are films filled with beautiful cinematography showing our planet in all its glory. Sometimes they feature characters going above and beyond for their family members or (as in this case) complete strangers. These films make us smile because we are reminded that there is so much beauty in the world and if we all acted a little kinder to our fellow people, then the world would automatically become a better place.
Little Imp made us smile and for a multitude of reasons, all of which we will go through here. Set in China, a father leaves his son inside his car while he visits the temple. The father promises the son (Yian Liu) that he will return in 45 minutes (which is a ridiculously long time to leave a child alone in a car), only to return after an hour and a half. The father is then approached by a temple guard (who is only doing his job) who demands payment for parking outside for such a long time. The father refuses to pay, even though the guard will get into trouble with his boss, and only makes a paltry sum of money for doing his work.
When home, the young boy, who is only four years of age, decides to fix his father’s mistake. After stealing money from his father’s drawer, he leaves the house and heads for the train station. Looking to buy a ticket and find which train to take to get to the temple, the young adventurer is apprehended by a stranger who then calls his father. After being scolded by the father, the son shows his determination and heads out again, first looking for dropped money at a local cinema before heading to the temple and paying the guard the fine that is owed to him.
With a runtime of twenty minutes, Little Imp is impressive, especially when you find out that Weiyang Liu shot the whole film on an iPhone using only natural light. What’s also impressive is that director Liu took up many of the roles needed in his crew, including writing, producing, cinematography, editing, production design, location scouting, casting, and providing the subtitles too. He really did go all in and he has shown himself to be a very capable filmmaker, even with little at his disposal.
As stated above, Little Imp succeeded in making us smile. We are now going to count the minutes, hours, and days until another Weiyang Liu film lands on our desks to review.
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