TWENTY

LOGLINE: Amid the tumultuous events of 2020, a mysterious speakeasy in Atlanta, Georgia, becomes a home for twenty people to share their stories of loss, resilience, and hope as they express their feelings through candid conversations, art, and performance. “Twenty” is an observational film in which audiences are drawn into a dreamy underground world, witnessing a group’s unique yet universal vulnerabilities—shown through scenes shot in intimate black-and-white.

SCREENINGS

Atlanta Film Fetsival 2023, Visions du Reel Market 2023

SYNOPSIS:

Set in a speakeasy in Atlanta, “Twenty” is a feature documentary about twenty young people making it through 2020. The film is an observational time capsule that lays bare the raw reflections of a group of people surviving a year that will be seared into our generational memory. They are here to help us remember—should we ever forget—what it was like to live here and now. Think “Coffee and Cigarettes” meets “The Hottest August” meets “Paris is Burning.”

“How are you doing?” asks Lev Omelchenko, the bartender/director. Most people answer with a long exhale or a short, bitter laugh. “It’s been a shit year, obviously,” says Maggie Kane, a tech-activist, who witnessed the murder of Rashard Brooks from her truck in the Wendy’s drive-thru on June 12th. Brooks, a twenty-seven-year-old Black man, was fatally shot by a police officer responding to a complaint that a man was asleep in a car blocking a restaurant drive-thru lane. “This year doesn’t know what the fuck it wants to be,” says Robert Blue, an Atlanta native and a BLM activist, who was held without bail in Fulton County Prison for over a month for his role in the protests. “I’m alright, I’m alive," says Sam Prince, a visual artist, whose year has been defined by their decision to begin gender affirming hormone therapy. These are three of twenty voices featured in this film. All of these voices weave together, connecting to reveal overarching themes and personal traumas.

The Black Lives Matter Movement. Health Care. Abortion. Incarceration. Murder. Arson. COVID. Exhaustion. Extinction. Being Queer. Being Black. Being Mexican. Being White. Poverty. Trump. QAnon. Liberals. Anti-Maskers. Fragility. Community. Capitalism. Dreams. Delusions. Patience. Time.

The film opens with a movement piece by Benji Stevenson, a queer Black artist and poet. They climb up the stairs, entering the speakeasy through a secret door inside a wardrobe. The soundtrack begins, percussion music by Atlanta legend Deantoni Parks. Once inside the speakeasy, we cut to black—TWENTY—and then to the conversations. Two cameras are behind the bar to capture the subjects in wide shot and close up.  

  Arthur rattles a jar with a rotten tooth, while Gracie describes her ordeal in getting it ripped out. Her health insurance rejected a root canal. Cut to black. Thais takes a sip and talks about how she is suffering with lingering effects from having COVID in the spring. It’s an auto-immune disease and she can’t afford the blood work. She mentions she’s also been struggling because of her recent abortion. “That’s sad, too, let’s not talk about that.” Cut to black. Indya starts by talking about her grandmother's funeral. Looking at her mother's grief, Indya realized how deeply the American state has failed its Black citizens. Cut to an Interlude. Gracie and Arthur are on a makeshift stage performing a new song “Long Gone.” Gracie’s beautiful voice repeats the last line several times “A star. A star. A star”. Cut to black. And so on. The disco ball keeps spinning.

Over the course of roughly two hours, personal revelations are interconnected through collective memory, grief, and joy. And we see how much the characters in our film miss gathering in a safe, comfortable space where they can freely talk, laugh, cry, and perform. 

Bars are spaces where people become willing to be uniquely vulnerable, inhibitions momentarily lowered. “Twenty” offers audiences a rare opportunity to listen to a diverse group of people share their candid perspectives on the world as it unfolds in 2020. The film frames its subjects in dreamy black-and-white footage, shot from the perspective of an unknown bartender, giving the audience an opportunity to observe its subjects having a drink (or three) as they muse on their struggles, revelations, and hopes for the future. The bartender appears on screen only as the hands that place some much-needed drinks in front of people. His voice is not heard—we only hear the answers, jokes, and silences of the people sitting on the other side.

Some of the patrons are artists, and after hearing what they have to say, we see them take the stage and perform. The performances are edited between blocks of conversations, set as Interludes. Some people reappear at the bar, talking at length, while others have smaller contributions in conversation and bigger roles as performers. This structure culminates into an immersive experience: hanging out at a speakeasy in Atlanta on a long, dreamy night, listening to the city’s underground of artists, radicals, activists, educators and laborers.