BABY TEETH
A Short Film by ObsidianTV
Some things, you keep.
Logline
A midwife summoned to a home birth discovers the patient lost her baby six months ago — and her family is performing the labor she never had.
Baby Teeth is a fifteen-minute dark comedy about Josleen, a young midwife called to an emergency home birth, who discovers on arrival that her patient — Marie — is not in labor. Marie's husband and best friend have helped her construct an elaborate ritual to give birth, finally, to the daughter she lost six months ago.
Tone & Atmosphere
Candlelit and clinical at once — the warmth of a home that has become a shrine, lit like a held breath.
Baby Teeth lives in the gap between the maternity ward and the séance: muted greens, bruised blues, lamplight pooling on skin. The camera stays close and patient, letting the absurd curdle into the unbearable and back into something tender. We shoot grief the way the family lives it — straight-faced, ceremonial, and quietly hilarious.
Themes
Grief That Won't Leave
Mourning as a house guest who never leaves — love with nowhere to go, performing the future it was promised.
The Ritual of Refusal
A family that has rehearsed its denial into liturgy. If you stage the birth carefully enough, maybe the loss un-happens.
Care as Complicity
A midwife trained to deliver life is asked to midwife a fantasy. To do her job, she must decide which mercy is real.
In the Lineage Of
Hereditary (2018, dir. Ari Aster)
Loss as inheritance. The house remembers, and the dead keep their place at the table.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017, dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
For the deadpan absurdity and the willingness to play disturbing premises completely flat. Characters defend their bizarre choices with calm certainty.
The World
“This is a household where the dead don't leave. The grandmother is in the morning coffee. The dog is on the mat, taxidermied. The daughter who was never born is in a swaddle on her mother's chest. And the midwife who arrives to deliver her has a tin of baby teeth she counts every morning in her bathroom.”
Key Visuals & Mood
The Production
Format
15 minutes
Narrative short
Single location
Production Company
Obsidian TV
Status
In pre-production
Festival Strategy
Baby Teeth is built for the genre-literate festival circuit, where dark comedy and psychological horror are no longer fringe but flagship. We are targeting premiere slots at Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, Fantastic Fest, and AFI Fest, with a secondary run through Fantasia, Sitges, and regional shorts programs to build critical momentum toward a feature adaptation.