The Chronicles Of The Struggling Actor

A young wannabe actor struggles to find that one breakout role and begins to fantasise about how his life would turn out if he could just get the big break that he is looking for.

As with most struggling actors, the lead (Janneh) in writer/director, Lyud Hristov’s debut short film, remains anonymous. When we first meet him, he’s filming himself on his phone in his bedroom, trying to make an audition tape for the next big thing which is finally going to catapult him towards the success that he knows he deserves. First though, he has to deal with interruptions from his long-suffering mother (Smales) and from his flatmate (Lawrence), as he desperately tries to keep things professional in front of the camera.

While his friends are always on hand to offer soothing words of encouragement, his mother tries to give him the best advice she can, which is to give up on such a silly dream, and to put his efforts into finding himself a proper job with real, actual prospects. However, the struggling actor must always stand strong in the face of setbacks, rejections, adversity, and others’ lack of faith, and with this one last chance to prove himself, he’s determined to claim a part in this new production and set himself off on the path that he knows is waiting for him.

Unfortunately for our plucky protagonist, nobody is taking him seriously and he’s not being offered any sort of time or space to really let his range shine through. From his self-important acting coach, to his manager at the bar where he works, he is belittled, and undermined, and stopped from ever getting to give his best. As pressure piles upon pressure, something inevitably breaks, and soon our struggling actor is finding it hard to remain in the real world, retreating into fantasies, daydreams, and false reminiscences, to help himself cope until he finally receives the call he has been wating for all this time.

Even though we never get to learn his name, in the eleven minutes that we get to spend with the struggling actor, we find out a lot about him as a person and are party to a lot of his hopes, fears, dreams, and motivations. Abdul-Malik Janneh does a sterling job of portraying these emotions and themes through the character, and is able to ‘turn it on’ when getting into the roles that are being asked of him, even though he never gets very far into the performance before being stopped.

Writer/director, Lyud Hristov keeps his scenes pacy and engaging, especially with the music choices, which set the tone for the film and for the actor’s personal struggles, while also adding in some nice visual touches and continuity gags to reward the more discerning viewer. There is a lot going on in every scene of The Chronicles Of The Struggling Actor and Hristov makes sure that everything comes together seamlessly, from the visuals, to the performances, to the sound, to help pull us into the actor’s story and live it alongside him. Once the more fantastical asides come into play, this then gets amped up by a level or two, and the frantic, desperate nature of the struggling actor is revealed to us piece by piece, as he begins to fall apart.

There is a definite frustrated nature to the entire production of The Chronicles Of The Struggling Actor, mirroring the feelings that most people will have experienced in trying to break out into a creative profession. Hristov understands the nature of the business intimately and successfully transfers this frustration, desperation, and disappointment into every frame of his film. They say to write what you know, and it seems that here, even in his debut short film, Hristov has laid out everything he knows and understands about how it feels to be the struggling artist, maintaining his vision throughout and truly captivating the audience into the process.

For what is a fun and evocative eleven minutes, The Chronicles Of The Struggling Actor will take you out of your comfortable armchair, and will make you squirm, sweat, and laugh as you go on the journey of anonymity with our failed lead, hoping against hope for a positive outcome and the fabled Hollywood happy ending.