Producer and writer Tonia Magras’ directorial debut, “Do You Remember Me?” (2025), draws inspiration from her life in a story about a fifty something year old woman, Nicky Danet (April Lisette), triggered from her perfect present into a traumatic past after receiving a friend request from a former Stanford College friend, Dale Hawkins (Cameron Mysliwicz), who betrayed her trust on May 4, 1987.
“Do You Remember Me?” is so real in the way that a horrible situation is depicted without sensationalizing sensitive matters while still capturing the horror. The problem with a lot of movies that tackle rape is that filmmakers get tempted to center it as a before and after situation as if the survivor does not still have a life that has to continue while also not wanting to trivialize violence by moving on too quickly. Also in these films, there is a potentially prurient way of filming that almost verges on pornographic. Magras never falls for those traps. The older Nicky is a woman who falls apart and comes together. It will happen without her going into oblivion and getting trapped in the past.
By toggling between timelines and showing Nicky now and then, the story centers the protagonist. It serves a double purpose: creates dread over what has not happened yet while reassuring the audience that she exists outside of the worst moment in her life. Even though “Do You Remember Me?” is a drama, it has the horror effect of wanting to scream at the screen and tell the younger version, Nicky Collins (Annabella Valle, who has a sweetness and an edge reminiscent of Michelle Rodriguez), to run. Hindsight is 20/20, and the signs that Dale is a bad egg are there, but not obvious so it avoids victim blaming while also showing the red flags.
“Do You Remember Me?” shows a huge spectrum of men from positive to toxic masculinity and everything in between. The film actually depicts a solid, realistic marriage where the husband, Greg (Mark Souza), is perfect. Where did the already prepared lasagnas come from? Campus officer Jay Callins (Krystian Bester) is a man who wants to do good and honors his official capacity as protector, but also his innate inability to do so because of circumstances outside of his control, including the inability to time travel or change systemic gender bias. Magras does a great job of showing decent men without treating their decency as a solution to the evil acts of bad men. Depending on how toxic the men are, they get less screentime, so the rapists are just bodies and shadows. Dale is the strangest character of all and is inscrutable, but ultimately the worst of all. If anyone else made this film, it would be hard to resist analyzing and unpacking Dale in a psychological profile, but he remains sidelined as a punishment. He does not get to take anything else away from Nicky, including screen time.
In the interest of full disclosure, I first overheard about this film on March 3, 2025 while waiting to appear on WGBH’s “Rooted.” I rudely invited myself into her conversation about the film that she just completed and have been eager to watch it ever since. She did not ask me to review it. I asked her. On Sunday, June 22, 2025, the 2025 winner of Best Narrative Short at the Cannes International Shorts Festival was shown at the 2025 Roxbury International Film Festival, and if you did not get a chance to see it on the big screen, “Do You Remember Me?” is also available on YouTube, but try to watch it on the biggest screen available in your home. Magras has plans to develop “Do You Remember Me?” into a movie, but I want so much more—a television series. If the short expands, I would love to know more about Nicky the athlete, which feels like the reason that the football players ultimately targeted her. Also ,another potential storyline could be how Nicky raises her two sons and daughter compared to how she navigated similar challenges at their age,
Autofiction is tricky because the fictional side invites invention and consumption while the autobiographical side demands faithfulness to the truth. If anyone can figure out how to walk that tightrope, Magras can. “Do You Remember Me?” is already perfect as it is, but with more money and resources, it will be interesting to see which direction Magras takes this story.
