Switches, the R-rated romantic comedy short film written and directed by Brandon Broussard, is heading to the Oscar-qualifying BronzeLens Film Festival in Atlanta, where it will screen on August 27 at 2:38 p.m. The film, which previously won Best Short Film at the Essence Film Festival and has also been accepted into the LA Shorts International Film Festival, stars Sinqua Walls and Chanté Adams.
The film follows Dawn and Jake Butler, once the it couple of the DTLA creative scene, whose marriage is crumbling under rent, ambition and growing distance. When eviction and divorce begin to creep in, the couple turns to Happy Couples, a secretive startup promising an empathy revolution through its trial drug Switch, a pill that lets couples trade consciousness for 24 hours. The pill works. Dawn wakes up in Jake’s six-foot-four frame and Jake jolts into Dawn’s body. They must walk, work and love in each other’s lives for a single day until an accident, a forbidden drink and an even more forbidden night trap them in the swap for an entire trimester.
Broussard is a Howard University alum and USC Writing Fellow with more than 15 years of writing and producing experience across Lionsgate, Netflix, Universal, Warner Bros. and Amazon MGM. The film is produced by Mel Jones and Stephen Love and financed by Samansa under their production label SSTRUCK, a Japan-based streaming platform dedicated to championing bold short-form storytelling from emerging filmmakers.