Outlier
"Outlier" is the second short film project of Lailaps Pictures Ltd. and the aspiring director/author Martin Wallner, after his successful festival contribution "A Lost and Found Box of Human Sensation".
Statistically, cancer patient and successful writer LILITH WINTERBOTTOM (Jean Marsh) should be dead by now. But the cynical misanthrope seems to scare even death away, in order to fulfill one final task: To finish her last book and find a hero's death worthy of her beloved main character SPIDER O'CONNELL (Ed Stoppard), as he takes a last stand against his nemesis, the RED WIDOW (Antje Traue).
However, as the lively and deeply religious ODAMEE MARSHALL (Miriam Margolyes) becomes her hospital roommate, the quiet times of authorial prosperity are over. Unnerved by her "sanctimonious gibberish", Lilith tries by all means to get rid of her new enemy and thereby gets on to Odamee's little secret: In order not to worry her family, she uses her diabetes to cover for a cancer diagnosis. But she's not the only pretender in the room, as Lilith avoids to admit to herself the true reason for her writer's block.
What starts out as a clash of religious belief and secularity turns into an unusual relationship, which helps each of them to deal with her own problems: Odamee realizes that every single day with her family is precious and therefore it is okay to poach on the lord's territory and perform a life-prolonging surgery. Lilith on the other hand finally acknowledges, that a hard-boiled agnostic like herself is scared hitless by the concept of death. And somehow Odamee's adamant belief in a hereafter helps her to find hope in the fact, that in spite of all reason death still remains a mystery. She decides to let her hero live on even after she has passed away and finally finds peace herself.
CAST: Miriam Margolyes, Jean Marsh, Ed Stoppard, Antje Traue, Shantia Ullmann, Götz Otto
DIRECTOR: Martin Wallner