Watch “Single Residence Occupancy” (2024), a compelling narrative and drama short film by Omer Ben-Shachar. Explore themes of isolation and connection. Click to stream now!
🏠 Single Residence Occupancy (2024) — Drama short film by Omer Ben‑Shachar
A mother, two children, and one small room. Single Residence Occupancy distills a universe of love, pressure, and hope into ten minutes, following a Chinese immigrant in San Francisco as she receives heartbreaking housing news and wrestles with how to share it with her kids. Directed by Omer Ben‑Shachar and written by Belinda Huijuan Tang, it’s a tender slice‑of‑life that turns cramped space into expansive feeling.
🧭 Overview
- Genre: Drama · Family · Social realism
- Director: Omer Ben‑Shachar 🎬
- Writer: Belinda Huijuan Tang ✍️
- Producer: Yuky Shen
- Cast: Lauren Mei (Weiling) · Madison Paige · Darren Shen‑Kao · Kathy Wu
- Runtime: 10 minutes ⏱️
- Language: Mandarin (with English)
- Country: United States 🇺🇸
- Premiere & festivals: Woodstock (2024) · Bend (2024) · CAAMFest (2025) · AAIFF (2025), among others
- Awards: Jury Award — Best Narrative Short (Academy Award‑Qualifying), Atlanta Film Festival (2025) · Imagine Entertainment/Adobe “From Minutes to Movies” ShortFest winner (2024).
Sources for credits, runtime, language, awards, and festival selections come from the director’s page, Short of the Week, and IMDb.
Watch the short:
📖 Story in brief
- The waiting: Weiling, a Chinese immigrant mother, anxiously checks for a decision from the San Francisco Housing Authority, hoping to move her family out of their SRO into a bigger home.
- The letter: The application is denied. The room doesn’t get smaller, but the future suddenly does.
- The dilemma: How do you tell children that the space they dream of won’t arrive—at least not today? Weiling rehearses truth, kindness, and courage in equal measure.
- The heartbeat: The film finds drama not in big twists but in fragile acts—cooking, tidying, listening, choosing which words can bear the weight of love.
Short of the Week frames the film as a poignant, immersive portrait of a family doing their best within a minuscule room, rooted in real reporting on immigrant families living in SROs.
🎨 Creative DNA and style
- Lived‑in realism: Close quarters, soft natural light, and the choreography of everyday care—hands, glances, shared objects—carry the drama.
- Economy of detail: Ten minutes, no excess. Each cut holds emotional consequence; each silence says what language can’t.
- Documentary texture, narrative soul: Inspired by articles and photographs of Chinese immigrant families in SROs, the film honors reality while crafting a focused, intimate fiction.
- Casting as compass: Performances center dignity and restraint, especially Lauren Mei’s Weiling, whose choices ripple through the room and our chest.
🌟 Themes and resonance
- Home vs. housing: The difference between love’s space and legal square footage.
- Parental courage: The ethics of telling hard truths to protect a child’s trust.
- Invisible labor: The emotional and logistical load immigrant parents carry, often unseen.
- Systems and small rooms: Policy decisions echo in pots, school bags, and bedtime routines.
Short of the Week highlights the core question: “How do you make a home when the world refuses you the dignity of proper shelter?”—a line that crystallizes the film’s moral center.
✅ Pros and ❌ cons
- Pros:
- Intimate precision: A compact runtime that never feels thin.
- Human truth: Everyday moments rendered with uncommon tenderness.
- Contextual integrity: Real‑world inspiration grounds the drama.
- Cons:
- Limited scope: The single‑room focus may leave viewers curious about the wider system.
- Emotional restraint: Its subtlety might frustrate those seeking catharsis.
💡 Humanized takeaway
Single Residence Occupancy understands that the hardest work in a small room is building hope. Ben‑Shachar and Tang center a mother’s choice—between protecting innocence and honoring reality—and show how love can stretch farther than walls, even when the paperwork says otherwise.
🔍 Credits, awards, and where it’s playing
- IMDb: 10‑minute runtime, Mandarin language, cast (Lauren Mei, Madison Paige, Darren Shen‑Kao, Kathy Wu), and synopsis.
- Official film page: Awards (Atlanta FF Jury Award), Woodstock/Bend selections, Imagine/Adobe ShortFest win, and 2025 festival run (CAAMFest, AAIFF, Athens, Indy Shorts, BEYOND, NFMLA) are listed by the director.
- Short of the Week: Production credit (Yuky Shen), San Francisco setting, inspiration from reportage and photography, and thematic framing.