An Uber driver works a shift with his skeptical teen daughter in tow.


BLIND SPOT is used with permission from Soph Webberley. Learn more at   / sophwebberley  .


Azaria is at a party, unhappy and waiting for her dad Paul to pick her up. Paul arrives in his car, where he's still on his rideshare shift right before he's due to go to his school reunion. But all those plans have gone awry with Azaria in the mix.

After dropping off a passenger, Paul continues with his shift, and the conversation reveals the gap between him and his daughter. Paul lectures Azaria about enjoying her youth and not taking things so seriously. But when they listen to a local callin show and things turn embarrassingly personal, Paul's authority as a dad is punctured.

Directed by Soph Webberley from a script written by Nathan D'Arcy Roberts, this sharp yet affectionate short comedy is essentially a family drama with a sly eye for the ironies of life, as a father and daughter verbally spar during a rideshare shift. Shot with a moodily dark eye with dynamism in the framing, pacing and editing, the film weaves a series of Uber rides into a unique riff on a road movie, where a family relationship is changed by the journey together.

The storytelling takes advantage of the close quarters of a car to force ideas, beliefs and dynamics out into the open and then upends them in an unexpected and sharply funny manner. Paul is a specific, welldrawn character, but any parent will recognize the putupon exasperation in his tone as he lectures Azaria, who immediately sulks with an eyeroll and a slump in her seat. On the remainder of his rideshare shift, Paul gets on Azaria's case, telling her she needs to enjoy her youth. In other words, act more like him when he was a teenager.

With the format of the car ride, the film leans on dialogue and performance to generate tension and turning points in the arc. As Paul, actor Ben Bailey Smith's engaging performance drives much of the film, playing Paul as both lovably full of himself and genuinely caring (and worrying) for his daughter, played by young actor Ozioma Ihesiene with just the right balance of snark, cringe and vulnerability. As Paul reminisces about his youth, we get the unspoken sense that his glory days are over. But even that illusion will be punctured when a caller on the radio show they listen to reveals the truth about Paul's teenage years, which unmasks the pretense of parental authority that Paul has.

Wellwritten with sharply drawn, relatable characters and touches of sly humor, BLIND SPOT builds up to a gently heartwarming ending that stays true to the slightly gritty London setting and recalibrates the relationship between father and daughter. "Parents just don't understand" is a saying that many teens would say about their parents, but the fun of this short is revealing parents as flawed and full of foibles as the teens they're trying to mentor. As parents want their children to live up to certain ideals and expectations, adults often muster a sense of leadership that they still struggle with. For Paul, that ruse is up. But luckily, what's left is a willingness to meet one another where they're at, leaving a little more room for affection and love to flow unfettered.