ANGEL.

‘ANGEL.’ is the story of a dream. But this dream doesn’t take us into a fictional world; it remains anchored in our reality. The short documentary signed by Charlotte White has the stakes of a biopic, even if it doesn’t focus on the entire career of the young singer and songwriter Indy Angel. At the same time, the project is instead an invitation to the creative process of a young woman who was not afraid to entrust her destiny to her own aspirations. Thus, the documentary has the form of a succession of testimonials and footage fragments portraying, on the one hand, the family relationships that influenced the shaping of the young artist’s personality, and, on the other hand, her providential meetings that helped her assert her creativity and sublimate her suffering. Far from aiming to depict a spectacular destiny, the director actually insists on the simplicity and naturalness with which the “protagonist” refused the path of a conventional university evolution to materialize her own desires in the music field. The surprise effect felt by the viewer occurs in a different way, precisely by the fact that the project offers us everything else but a narrative at the limit of the sensational.

Thus, the feeling of comfort, of normality, which rejects the cliché of the “damned artist” or of the supreme sacrifice in the name of art, fills the atmosphere of the project with a special light and a particular emotional warmth within a clean succession of frames that unite the past with the present. Obviously, this story doesn’t lack moments of (anti)climax, sour details or unfortunate experiences. However, beyond the fact that “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”, those facts do not exceed the parameters of a tender or nostalgic confession without aiming to amaze by their exceptionality at any cost. Charlotte White, therefore, creates a documentary that, in addition to its biographical stakes, illustrates the everyday beauty of a philosophy of life that always puts chasing your own dreams in the first place. Indy Angel is, from this point of view, an artist who deserves our admiration not only for the quality of her work but also for the naturalness with which she embraced her aspirations while deciding to see in any experience a reason to enjoy music. And, obviously, the documentary ‘ANGEL.’ is a reason for all of us to enjoy this music together with her.