CYCLES

Some films strive to be heard; "Cycles" is more interested in what we see when no one thinks we're looking. It lingers not in the loud moments, but in the accidental ones — the way a person folds a shirt, avoids eye contact, or hesitates before speaking. It's about disconnection masquerading as routine, and the brief collisions that threaten to undo it all. 

"Cycles," written by and starring Andre Kelly and directed by Alex Eskandarkhah, isn’t interested in transformation as a tidy narrative arc. It’s a story about inertia — about the rituals we build to keep the world out and how even the smallest disruption can expose what we’ve buried. 

Jerome is not on a journey so much as stuck in a loop: isolated, detached, grieving, and managing his emotions through the safe distance of screens and routines. When his washing machine breaks, it isn’t fate knocking — it’s life nudging. He’s forced into a late-night laundromat where he meets a woman who isn’t there to save him or be saved, but to mirror something uncomfortable back at him: that connection, even unwanted, can be disarming. 

Kat Khan’s character is drawn with sharp edges and guarded softness — someone marked by her past, but not defined by it. Her interaction with Jerome is slow, resistant, and painfully honest. There is no neat vulnerability here; it’s cautious, half-revealed, and never performative. The connection they build feels fragile and unspoken, like something that could break simply by acknowledging it too openly. 

Eskandarkhah directs with restraint, allowing the tension to come from what’s withheld rather than what’s dramatized. Every glance, pause, and unfinished sentence carries emotional weight. The laundromat’s sterile, fluorescent light becomes a fitting backdrop — not for revelation, but for unearthed weariness. These two characters don’t meet in the middle; they circle one another, scarred and hesitant. 

When a figure from the woman’s past intrudes, the film doesn’t escalate — it contracts. And that choice is crucial. Trauma here isn’t a plot device; it’s a presence, always humming in the background, even in silence. Jerome doesn’t step forward to help. He retreats. And the film allows him to. Because some people are too familiar with their own brokenness to risk touching someone else’s. 

This is a film that rejects the comfort of catharsis. Instead, it forces us to sit in the discomfort of emotional paralysis, where moments of connection are rare, fleeting, and often too much to bear. "Cycles" doesn’t offer answers, but it dares to ask: what happens when you’re finally seen — and it hurts?