Following well-received mainstream video game adaptations like HBO’s The Last of Us or Prime Video’s Fallout , the timing for the fantasy dramedy short film Chuck and Fern couldn’t be more fitting. Making its world premiere at the Oscar- and BAFTA-qualifying LA Shorts International Film Festival on Friday, the short follows the story of two video game characters, Chuck (Lorena Jorge), a D-List villain, and Fern (Mateo Mpinduzi-Mott), a carefree Link-inspired swordsman, as they face an existential crisis when they discover the child playing their game is falling on hard times at home. Here, playwright-filmmaker Henry Alexander Kelly speaks to Deadline about the importance of creative escape, the power of crowdfunding, and working with an Afro-Latino cast and crew.

DEADLINE: This video game-based film draws on video game inspirations and references. But more than that, it’s about something deeper. It’s about domestic violence. Why use the world of gaming to tell this story?

HENRY ALEXANDER KELLY: Yeah. It’s a heavy story, but I like to make entertaining stories that also have medicine in them. There’s this aspect of this little boy escaping into games. For me, when I see people playing video games… everyone has something in their life. I come from a family that fought and yelled and stuff like that, but video games really helped me escape those feelings and emotions and helped me find solace. And a lot of the movies and things that inspired me, like Taika Waititi, who just does a wonderful job of bringing so much comedy and fun and heart into these really heavy topics, from Boy to Thor: Ragnarok.

DEADLINE: Where did the writing process begin for you? Were these two ideas of video games and domestic violence separate, or did they always flow together?