LARGO, the stirring new short film from writer-directors Salvatore Scarpa and Max Burgoyne-Moore makes its Los Angeles debut this August at the Oscar®️qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival, following a powerful world premiere at Indy Shorts. With visual elegance and emotional urgency, LARGO tells the story of Musa, a young Syrian refugee in the UK, who constructs a makeshift boat in a fantastical quest to return home and find his missing parents. This is a film that lingers.
Told entirely through the eyes of its child protagonist, LARGO distills themes of grief, resilience, and imagination into a quietly searing journey. At the center is Zack Elsokari, in a breakout performance as Musa, balancing innocence and trauma with remarkable subtlety. Tamsin Greig, Ammar Haj Ahmad, and Kevin McNally lend gravitas in supporting roles, but it’s Musa’s inner world, fragile, determined, and haunting, that carries the narrative’s emotional weight.
Scarpa and Burgoyne-Moore’s direction is compassionate and lyrical, avoiding melodrama while refusing to sanitize the realities of displacement. Their longtime creative partnership is evident in the film’s confidence and cohesion. The cinematography by Rick Joaquim is painterly yet immediate, often placing Musa against wide, lonely landscapes or enclosed, chaotic interiors, visual metaphors for a child caught between worlds. The original score by Stuart Hancock walks the line between melancholy and magical realism, amplifying the film’s tone without overpowering its subtleties.
One of LARGO’s most impressive achievements is its integration of social purpose with artistic integrity. The production’s apprenticeship program for displaced creatives, and its classroom outreach initiative, reflect a rare commitment to real-world impact, going beyond advocacy to foster genuine community engagement. These efforts resonate especially in a moment when refugee stories are so often politicized or stripped of their human core.
Executive produced by Oscar®️ winners Chris Overton and Rebecca Harris-Turner (The Silent Child), and produced by Rachid Sabitri and Charles Meunier, LARGO joins a growing canon of socially conscious cinema that trusts its audience, especially younger viewers, to grapple with hard truths through the empathetic lens of storytelling.
With its poetic restraint, deeply moving performances, and child-centered perspective, LARGO is more than an Oscar contender, it’s a timely reminder of the power of hope, and the importance of seeing the world through a child’s eyes.
Verdict: 5/5
Sally Murphy for We Love Short Movies
