NAY DAY | Omeleto

A teenager makes videos. Naomi is a teenager who wants to be a TikTok star. Eccentric, savvy and outgoing, Naomi's goal is complicated by her difficult home life, with a self-absorbed father and a religious mother. The best part of her life is her friendship with her bestie, Orla, "the coolest babe you'd ever meet." Orla and Naomi work together on the videos. But more importantly, they laugh and dream together, supporting one another emotionally. But when that source of love and light is taken away, Naomi must lean on other aspects of herself to cope -- and discover just what happened. Directed and written by Derek Ugochukwu, this stylish, energetic drama-thriller is as sly, vibrant and complex as its heroine. On the surface, Naomi is presented as a typical teen with social media aspirations, glued to her phone and always making a video. But the sleekly crafted film delights in peeling back her layers, achieving a remarkable balance of tone, genre and emotional power. We meet Naomi as she walks her dog resentfully, listening to pulse-pounding hip-hop and trying to make her TikTok videos. In true video confessional style and sharp, wryly profane dialogue, she narrates the ins and outs of her life directly to the camera, talking about her troubled parents, her job at her father's store, her dreams and obstacles. Most importantly, she talks about her best friend, Orla, with sincere affection. They share a special friendship, both confidants and co-conspirators. The storytelling is both dynamic in its cinematic rhythms and ingenuously written, especially as it shifts out of character portrait mode into something trickier. Naomi has both a special ability and an agenda, and as we surmise that something's happened to Orla, Naomi takes it upon herself to solve the mystery and pursue justice. The pace gains both darkness and sweep, as strands of the story weave together. They reveal a thorny, difficult world full of difficult, dark realities, especially for women like Naomi and Orla. Some pieces take a sharp eye to notice, but as they fall into place, they reveal a cleverly layered narrative -- and a young woman with more power than society normally sees in or ascribes to her. That power is the ultimate resonance of NAY DAY, which ends on a chilling note, both for what happened to Orla and what measures Naomi takes to ensure it doesn't happen again. Such it is in a world where people's personalities are consumed but whose voices are unheard, and young women are looked at but not seen. NAY DAY. Courtesy of Derek Ugochukwu at https://samsonfilms.com.