Directed by Julia Jansch
In Dears in the Headlights, director Julia Jansch crafts a film that is as tender as it is unsettling. What begins as a meditation on roadkill becomes a layered exploration of grief, transformation, and dignity, both human and animal.
The subject of this haunting short is Philli, a young woman who collects dead animals from the roadside and taxidermys them. Not for spectacle. Not for preservation. But for peace. For mourning. For art. Each creature she restores is treated with the kind of reverence typically reserved for the living, and that’s the point. Dears in the Headlights isn’t about death as an end. It’s about death as something to carry, to hold gently, and sometimes, to reshape.
What fuels this practice is personal tragedy. After the death of her brother, Philli and her mother take radically different but equally powerful paths toward healing. Her mother launches South Africans Against Drunk Driving. Philli begins reconstructing the bodies of broken animals. One becomes an activist. The other becomes an artist. But both resist forgetting. The beauty of this film lies in how it allows both women’s grief to exist without hierarchy, different expressions, same ache.
Visually, the film is stunning. The contrast between mangled bodies and Philli’s calm, meticulous hands creates a tension that never slips into horror or pity. It feels sacred. The camera doesn’t flinch or romanticize. It simply witnesses.
Jansch, whose previous work, My Father, the Mover, won acclaim for its emotional intimacy, returns here with the same gentle gaze. She doesn’t push emotion. She lets it reveal itself through silence, through gesture, through skin, fur, doll eyes, wings and feathers.
The title, a clever spin on the phrase “deer in the headlights,” lingers long after the credits roll. In this version, the “dears” are not frozen in fear, they are held, mourned, and transformed. Philli does not look away. And this shows a healing not close to the norm but it is healing regardless.
In a world that moves too fast to grieve, Dears in the Headlights invites us to slow down, look closer, and love what’s already gone.
Screening Schedule:
20 Jul 14:00 Suncoast 6
27 Jul 14:15 Watercrest 1
2 Aug 14:30 The Labia, 2 Aug 14:30 The Bioscope
This review emanates from the Talent Press programme, an initiative of Talents Durban in collaboration with the Durban FilmMart Institute and FIPRESCI. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author (Gloria Nkatha) and cannot be considered as constituting an official position of the organisers.