Content warning: cancer, medical treatment, scars, emotional distress.
Can is a well-executed and deeply personal short in which Kailee McGee turns the camera on herself while navigating a late-stage breast cancer diagnosis. Written, co-produced and edited by McGee, the film unfolds largely as an inner monologue.
Shifting between versions of the old me, the new me and the future me. The title resonates both with cancer and with canvas, as she remakes herself on screen in an attempt to navigate a difficult transition she cannot otherwise control.
Raw close-ups of her unmade face, tears and scars lend the film an immediacy that is both vulnerable and confronting. As McGee asks whether to give in, exploit the experience or find a way through. Honest, layered and unsettlingly intimate, Can is a striking meditation on illness, identity and self-representation.
