CONTACT HOURS

Some films whisper their truths so softly that you almost don’t realise the weight of what they’re saying until long after the credits roll. "Contact Hours" is one of them. It doesn’t shout, doesn’t manipulate, doesn’t dress itself in overwrought speeches or melodramatic crescendos. Instead, it lingers—much like the grief and the guilt that follow in the wake of an unspoken tragedy.

Rufus Love’s script is restrained but razor-sharp in its honesty. By choosing a university caretaker as the film’s lens, "Contact Hours" sidesteps the well-trodden perspective of grieving friends or guilt-ridden parents and instead anchors itself in the quiet bystander—the man who unlocks the doors, cleans the corridors, and sees everything while seeing nothing at all. His job is practical, invisible, a backdrop to the lives of students who are too busy, too tired, or too indifferent to acknowledge his presence. And yet, when the worst happens, it is he who is left to bear witness.

Harry Richards’ direction is equally understated but deeply evocative. The film’s use of space is particularly striking—the long, impersonal corridors of the student halls, stretching into an infinite loop of closed doors. Each one a threshold between presence and absence, each one an unanswered question. We hear voices, but we don’t always see the people they belong to. Just like the caretaker, we sense lives unfolding behind these doors, but we are never truly invited in.

One of the film’s most affecting choices is how it juxtaposes warmth and distance. The caretaker, struggling with his own fractured relationship with his son, is caught between these two realities. He is a man who fixes things for a living, yet here he is, powerless to mend the gap between himself and the person he loves most.

"Contact Hours" doesn’t just explore student suicide; it confronts the ways in which we accept the surface of things, how we let small, seemingly insignificant interactions take the place of real connection. This is not a film that provides easy catharsis. There is no dramatic revelation, no grand resolution—just the gentle but urgent reminder that noticing matters. That checking in matters. That the spaces between us, the ones we so often overlook, are where the most profound struggles unfold.

In "Contact Hours," the tragedy is not just the loss itself but the silence surrounding it—the days before anyone notices, the words that were never spoken, the signs that were missed. It is a film about absence, but more importantly, it is a film about presence. About choosing to reach out, to ask the awkward questions, to be there before it’s too late.