DEAR [NAME] is Amara Abbas’s 4-minute 35mm short starring Ebenezer Gyau, built from real rejection emails. Plot, themes, cast, campaign background and how to watch.
A man sits in a windowless waiting room, and the polite language of job-rejection emails comes alive in his mouth. DEAR [NAME] is a four-minute film directed by Amara Abbas and starring Ebenezer Gyau. It launched in September 2026 as the centrepiece of an anti-bias campaign, so it is both a short film and a piece of advocacy. It is also very new, which means a thorough, accurate guide can still rank.
Not the film you meant? Several works share a similar title:
| Detail | Info |
|---|---|
| Title | DEAR [NAME] (the square brackets are part of the title) |
| Director / Writer | Amara Abbas |
| Co-writer | Yasmin Ali |
| Starring | Ebenezer Gyau |
| Runtime | About 4 minutes |
| Format | 35mm, 1.33:1 (4:3) |
| Production company | new—land |
| Agency | Worth Your While (Copenhagen) |
| Client | People Like Us (UK non-profit) |
| Campaign | Reject the Rejections |
| Launch | September 16, 2026 |
| Genre | Spoken-word short, drama, social-issue campaign film |
The film itself is only four minutes, so there is no separate trailer to chase. C41 Magazine embeds the full film from YouTube, and the campaign also released a 30-second version that runs in cinemas with Pearl & Dean from October 2. That cut works as a trailer-length introduction.
The full film is freely available online: C41 Magazine’s “Video of the Week” feature embeds it on YouTube, and Directors’ Library carries a listing and behind-the-scenes page. Embed the official upload on your own page once you confirm the link.
Light plot detail below.
The official description: while waiting for an interview, the language from corporate rejection letters comes alive in a job applicant’s mouth, turning the moment into what feels more like an invisible email exchange between him and the system that keeps rejecting him. C41 Magazine says the script is built from real rejection lines sent to ethnic minority candidates, giving that anonymous, automated language back to the people who receive it.
The setting is one room. The entire film takes place in an anonymous, windowless waiting room that has the logic of an office but none of its purpose. A two-way mirror dominates it. Creative Review reports that the mirror hides a team of all-white employees. By the end, one rejected candidate becomes part of a larger room of people waiting for the same answer.
This film does not follow a festival route. It is a campaign film, launched online and out of home, and I found no festival selections or film awards.
What I did find is campaign recognition and reach:
The film is the core of a campaign against bias in automated hiring. People Like Us, a UK non-profit working on ethnic minority equity in the workplace, commissioned it alongside new research. Reported figures include:
The campaign has three aims: to tell rejected applicants they may have the right to request a human review, to urge employers to disclose automation and commit to independent bias audits, and to call on government to consider screening transparency laws. A People Like Us statement sums up the idea: it is about putting the human back into human resources.
Abbas has said the film “is interested in uncomfortable truths.” She describes the material as personally meaningful, tied to how her name and background shape her perspective.
Abbas shot on 35mm in a 4:3 frame, which she says brought precision to the worldbuilding and kept the camera close to the character. She described wanting to strip the set of anything that roots it in a time or place. The key design choices:
The film has been well covered for its age. C41 Magazine chose it as a Video of the Week and ran a long interview with Abbas. Creative Review, Media Marketing, Roastbrief and other industry outlets covered the campaign. It also earned the Best TV of the Week pick noted above. I found no audience ratings or film-critic reviews, so there is nothing yet like an IMDb or Letterboxd score to cite.
Amara Abbas was born and raised in Chicago. Her new—land biography says she worked as an in-house Art Director at Apple before moving into directing, and that her work spans commercials, music videos and short films for brands including Under Armour, Lexus and Woodford Reserve, as well as the Skrillex music video Xena. A podcast profile says her debut short, Twin Flame (2021), was followed by signings with Iconoclast and new—land and a Young Guns 20 award from The One Club for Creativity. Her biography says she is interested in new ways to tell human stories. In the C41 interview she says she is moving toward restraint and simplicity, which this film’s single-room structure reflects.
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