High Score

Awards:

WINNER Best Thriller Short Film, 2020 Culver City Film Festival

WINNER Best Actor Short Film, 2020 Chelsea Film Festival

WINNER Best Short Film, 2020 Chelsea Film Festival

Festivals:

Hollyshorts Film Festival (Online), 2020

Chelsea Film Festival (Online), 2020

Culver City Film Festival (Online), 2020

Cinematters Social Justice Film Festival (Online), 2021

Director’s Statement:

“In April 2019, while we were in Los Angeles preparing to attend a screening of our first film “CASHED,” the Poway synagogue shooting occurred not too far away. It left us shaken and thinking of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting exactly six months before, and of countless others in recent years. The unlawful detainment of Central American people attempting to immigrate to the U.S. also weighed on us. We couldn’t shake the feeling that the inhumane conditions in our southern border’s detention centers seemed connected to the growing wave of white supremacist violence. It lit a fire inside us, an aching need to do more to better our world (or as they say in the Jewish tradition, to contribute to the effort of Tikkun Olam).

We were afforded that opportunity when we won the Audience Choice Award at Hollyshorts  Monthly Screenings with “CASHED,” an honor which awarded us invaluable filmmaking tools. We knew we needed to use these tools to make a film that would investigate this epidemic of racism-driven terrorism and how it connects to the humanitarian crisis at our southern border. We set out to explore the deepest and darkest corners of the internet’s echo chambers and their hoards of white supremacist propaganda.

Through our research, we learned that many of the recent mass shooters ascribed to a radical conspiracy theory called The Great Replacement, in which Jewish people are often blamed for disrupting society by bringing in immigrants of minority descent to “replace” the white male majority. We started to notice Great Replacement language all over American media, from the mainstream like Fox News (such as the “Soros-funded caravan” myth and when politicians and commenters alike refer to migrants as “invaders”) to the extreme like 4chan. The camps, the political rhetoric, the countless mass shootings driven by racism, all of it was unified under the same conspiracy theory that motivated terrorists from El Paso to Halle, terrorists motivated by the fear of some imaginary race war. Moreover, we learned the sickening truth that many internet platforms are breeding grounds for white extremism, utilizing the same tactics that any other cult would use: peer pressure, jingoism, and the promise of community for young men who have otherwise isolated themselves from the world.

 “High Score” was born out of our need to drag the violent hatred fermenting in the shadows of our media into the light, to expose the interconnectedness of these conspiracy theories and the dangers they pose to human life, and to reveal the almost supernatural power of the internet to amplify extremist ideologies and radicalize people to violent action. We hope you’ll join our fight to end white supremacy and racial violence.” 

- Serena Ryen & Ethan Itzkow (Writers/Directors)

High Score (15 minutes)

Social Horror

Directed By: Serena Ryen & Ethan Itzkow

Starring: BRIZA COVARRUBIAS, JILLIAN FERRY, ETHAN ITZKOW, SERENA RYEN, NOAM SHAPIRO, TAVARUS WEEMS, MICHAEL J. YORK

Screenplay By: Serena Ryen & Ethan Itzkow

Cinematography By: Jorge Arzac

Producer: Jessica Sharples

Associate Producers: Ester Jiron & Carlotta Summers