To Be Forgotten

  • Director

    Jorge Alvarez

  • Country, Year, Length

    United States, 2022, 8 minutes 50 seconds

  • Category

    Narrative Short

  • Format

    Digital

  • Festival Year

    2022

Film Screening & Ticket Information

When & Where to See this Film!

STREAM THIS FILM DURING OUR

VIRTUAL FILM FESTIVAL NOVEMBER 20 – DECEMBER 4!

In Person Date, Time & Location:

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3RD • 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
KAS Zukor • 35th St. • Long Island City, NY 11106

SCREENING BLOCK:

Unseen: Six films that urge us to truly see our fellow travelers.

Synopsis

An U.S Army veteran who spent his entire youth in the military. Fighting for what he believed in and for his country, has now fallen on hard times living on the streets of New York City, without a home or a dollar to his name. Once patrolling the deserts of the Middle East with his fellow soldiers, he is now wandering the city streets alone, looking for his next meal.

But all the horrors of war doesn’t still on the battlefields overseas, they follow him in his everyday life as a form of PTSD. As he makes his way through the city, every person he comes across either ignores him or shuns him away. Is this what he deserves for his sacrifice? He has fought wars and never feared the enemy but today his biggest fear is…“To Be Forgotten”.

Credits

  • Jorge Alvarez, Director, Stolen Innocence
  • Jorge Alvarez, Writer, Stolen Innocence
  • Vijaykumar Mirchandani, Producer, Coming Out with the Help of a Time Machine, Stranger in the Room, Divide Time To Breathe, The Last Jam Jar, Paese Che Vai, Love Can’t Be Locked Down, The Process, Habaneros, Where The Streets Have No Name
  • Lindsey Recanati, Producer
  • Anthony Paulino, Producer, Divide Time To Breathe
  • Greg Mays, Key Cast, “Homeless person”
  • Lindsey Recanati, Director of Photography
  • Tony Malik, Production Manager

Director Statement

As someone who grew up in New York City, seeing people living on the streets became a daily occurrence. So much so that people become desensitized to it, as if seeing someone sleeping on a street corner or on the subway as to seeing a piece of trash on the ground. Slowly I began to notice more and more homeless veterans on the streets. Asking for money but mostly asking for food and help.

So I thought to myself, why were there so many homeless veterans? Not only in New York City but in the entire county. These people gave so much for their country and to end up with no place to call home. This is a failure for us as a society and an embarrassment for us as a nation. So I wanted to make a film telling this story without getting over political or pointing the finger at just one individual or a group.

I just want the audience to relate to our protagonist and get emotionally connected to his situation and struggles. And after watching the film ask themselves these two questions: How did it become like this? And how could we change it?

Director Biography

“We don’t make movies to make more money. We make money to make more movies.” Words that Jorge Alvarez lives by, since he fell in love with films as a nine-year-old child. When he went to see the James Cameron directed epic Titanic with his mother and older sister. Brought to tears in the theater by Cameron’s master stroke and James Horner beautiful score. Jorge realizes that films can and are works of art.

Born in Brooklyn, New York. The son of two immigrant parents of Latino dissent. Jorge spend most of his childhood in front of his family’s living room tv. Watching movies, cartoons and Japanese anime. Which is a big influence on his work today. As the years went by, Jorge love of anime grew as he begun to make anime music videos on his old Dell home computer. That put him on the path to become a filmmaker but what really put it in his mind was watching The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the king in a dark movie theater. As he whispered to himself “This is what I want to do with my life”.

Jorge was accepted into several film schools but realize him and his family could not afford to send him. That did not stop him from chasing his passion, so he decided to form his own production company Filmcloudstudio with his childhood friends Tony Malik and David Thenor. With little experience and little to no budgets, their first few films were a great lesson in filmmaking.

Now with over eight years of filmmaking under his belt and bringing in some great and talented people into Filmcloudstudio like Anthony Paulino. Who was the cinematographer on Jorge’s directed short film Stolen Innocence. A film that would be screened at the 2019 International New York Film Festival. And worked together again writing Filmcloudsudio’s next film Red Rose. Directed by Jorge Alvarez and a film selected by the 2020 dumbo film festival.

The excitement and passion for films Jorge felt in that movie theater in 1997 are still there and even greater now. As he continues making films and telling story’s as a writer, director and producer.