“This was a fantastic effort by Joseph Villapaz”

by Ed Blackadder

A park bench sets the stage for Joseph Villapaz’s 14 Days, a film featuring a host of characters and acted out in a series of short vignettes. As the title suggests, 14 Days is told over a two week period, and we’re given a peek into the lives of a healthy mix of characters, and not all hail from Earth.

The main focus is placed on a pair of investigators, who, over the course of the film’s 53 minutes runtime, reveal the depth of their involvement to their career and to one another. I found this particular vignette to be the strongest of the bunch, and one that worked better than some of the others.


With trying to thread all these stories together and maintain some form of cohesion, Villapaz has a lot of balls in that air at one time, yet the filmmaker pulls it off with surprising ease. This is as much down to his skills with writing dialogue, as it is to the array of appealing actors.

A decent quality of acting was maintained throughout, and while not every vignette felt solid the writing helped keep things interesting. The lack of a budget prevented the filmmaker from using multiple backdrops, but he got by with what he had to work with … which was very little.

This was a fantastic effort by Joseph Villapaz and one that’s well worth taking the time to see.