Short Term 12

Grace Howard is the young supervisor of Short Term 12, a group home for troubled teenagers. She lives with her long-term boyfriend and coworker, Mason, but finds it difficult to open up to him emotionally. When Grace finds out she is pregnant, she schedules an appointment for an abortion; she eventually tells Mason about the pregnancy, who is overjoyed. She does not tell him she plans to have an abortion. At their facility, Grace and Mason focus their efforts on Marcus, a resident who is about to turn 18 and is struggling with the prospect of leaving the facility.

Grace bonds with Jayden, a recent arrival at Short Term 12 who has a history of self-harm. Jayden distances herself from the other teenagers, as she does not intend to stay at the facility for long. When her father fails to pick her up on her birthday, she reacts violently toward the staff. After her outburst, she sits in the "cool-down room" with Grace, who shows Jayden her own scars from cutting herself. That night, Jayden leaves the facility in the middle of her birthday celebrations. Unable to force her to return, Grace follows Jayden to her father's house. After finding the house empty, they return to Short Term 12. When Jayden reads Grace a cryptic story she has written, Grace begins to suspect that Jayden was abused by her father.

At a party hosted by Mason's foster parents, he proposes to Grace, who accepts. The following morning, Grace is upset by a phone call that reveals her father is being released from prison. She refuses to be consoled by Mason. She arrives at Short Term 12 to discover that Jayden has been picked up by her father overnight. She is angry at the decision to send Jayden back to her father, but her boss maintains that Jayden denied that she was abused by him. Later that day, Grace finds that Marcus has attempted to commit suicide after the death of his fish.

While waiting at the hospital as Marcus is being treated, Grace breaks down. Mason becomes upset for her refusing to talk to him about how she feels; instead, she tells him that she no longer wants to marry him and that she plans to have an abortion. She returns to Jayden's father's house and breaks in, intending to kill him while he sleeps, but she is interrupted by Jayden, who suggests that they smash his car instead. Grace tells Jayden that she was sexually abused by her own father. After Jayden shows Grace bruises from blows by her father, they return together to Short Term 12, where Jayden reports her father for physical abuse. Grace goes home to apologize to Mason, who tells her that Marcus will recover.

Several weeks later, Grace starts seeing a therapist. She is shown viewing an ultrasound of her fetus with Mason. Mason tells the rest of the staff about running into Marcus, who is doing well and has a girlfriend.

• Brie Larson as Grace Howard
• John Gallagher, Jr. as Mason
• Kaitlyn Dever as Jayden Cole
• Rami Malek as Nate
• Keith Stanfield as Marcus
• Kevin Hernandez as Luis
• Melora Walters as Dr. Hendler
• Stephanie Beatriz as Jessica
• Lydia Du Veaux as Kendra
• Alex Calloway as Sammy
• Frantz Turner as Jack
• Diana-Maria Riva as Nurse Beth

Destin Daniel Cretton based Short Term 12 on his experiences working in a similar facility.

Short Term 12 was originally conceived by Destin Daniel Cretton as a short film based on his experiences as a line staff worker at a group facility for teenagers where he had worked for two years; it served as his thesis project for his master's degree in film at San Diego State University.[4][5]^:5 The short film ran for 22 minutes and premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking.[4] After graduating from film school, Cretton decided to adapt the short into a feature-length screenplay, which won one of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' five Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting in 2010.[5]^:5 The largest change Cretton made when adapting the short film into a longer screenplay was changing the lead character's gender: Denim, a man loosely based on Cretton himself (played by Brad William Henke), became Grace, a young woman and the facility's supervisor.[5]^:5[6] Cretton researched similar facilities and interviewed former employees for the film, noting that the script featured stories directly told by children in these facilities from his interviews.[7]

Brie Larson auditioned for the role of Grace via Skype after the script had been sent to her;[8] John Gallagher, Jr. also won his role after a Skype conversation with Cretton, calling the screenplay "probably the best script that I've been sent, ever".[9] Larson and Gallagher prepared for their roles by shadowing line staff at a group home similar to that in the film, and collaborated to create backstories for their characters.[5]^:7–8 Lakeith Stanfield was the only actor from the original short film to reprise his role in the feature.[5]^:10 Cretton struggled to contact Stanfield when casting the film in 2012—Stanfield had stopped acting, left his managers, and did not own a cell phone—but Cretton was eventually able to reach him by email to tape an audition.[5]^:10[10] Most of the children featured in the film were cast through open casting calls, and most had no prior acting experience.[10] Alex Calloway, who played Sammy, found a casting call through Craigslist and won the role after sending in a cell phone video audition.[5]^:8

The film was shot over 20 days in September 2012.[5]^:5 Filming took place in Los Angeles, and scenes set at the group home were shot at a former short-stay facility located near the neighborhood of Sylmar.[6][11] The film was edited by Nat Sanders as it was filmed. Both the original cut of the film and the shortened director's cut were over 2 hours long, whereas Cretton wanted the final cut to be under 100 minutes.[12] Sanders said that the original cut of the film felt too heavy and "made you feel pretty depressed about humanity", so a number of scenes were deleted or trimmed to "lighten up" the film's mood, with a final running time of 96 minutes.[12]

Short Term 12 premiered in March 2013 at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, where it won the Grand Jury and Audience Awards in the Narrative Feature category and was purchased for distribution by Cinedigm.[13] Its international premiere was held at the Locarno Film Festival in August 2013, where it received a standing ovation.[13]

In theaters, the film was given a platform release: on August 23, it was released in Los Angeles and New York City, expanding the next weekend to Phoenix, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Boston and Berkeley, and progressively expanding to more cities until its widest release on September 13.[14]

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• Short Term 12 at Metacritic