Short Film

Laplace

Joshua Sim Broder

Shelton, CT

Advisor: Ryan Brown

Artist Bio

Joshua Sim-Broder is a director and screenwriter from Shelton, Connecticut. Obsessed with storytelling from a young age, he draws inspiration from music, animation, and abstract imagery to tell emotional (and sometimes comedic) stories. He is currently a Senior at the University of Connecticut, where he is pursuing a BFA in Film/Video Production. There, he has worked extensively on student films as a writer, director, and cinematographer. His goal is to create personal and imaginative stories that resonate with people, whether they laugh, cry, or somewhere in between.

Artist Statement

Laplace is a narrative short film exploring themes of mental health and the distortion of reality pertaining to a young university student. College is a time of great change where personal stress and external pressures collide. Many outside forces try to pull individuals into a single ideology, believing it offers every answer to life. Shaped by subjective experiences and unstable emotion, the main character feels trapped in a twisted worldview.

This film is inspired by my personal struggles while attending college. I felt a lot of anxiety for the future, and was caught between complications with school, a dead-end job, divorcing parents, and the loss of my childhood home. When I moved to Storrs, I had trouble talking to anyone for nearly a year and I felt invisible. I wanted to illustrate the main character’s conflicts as a culmination of these struggles, all within the backdrop of eerily serene New England. With Laplace, I hope to translate an experience that shows how feelings of isolation and powerlessness can drive people to make dangerous choices that ultimately go unnoticed around us.