Film Review: Playdate
by Karen Pecota

Laura Campbell and Amberlee Colson, USA, 2024

The experience of loss comes in all forms of expression. Filmmakers Laura Campbell and Amberlee Colson creatively use their film PLAYDATE to express what two mothers do to keep their memories alive of their daughters’ last play date and what the girls would have wished had happened as they played together.

PLAY DATE is an uncanny presentation of memorializing children who have left this earth too quickly. Two mothers try to bring connection into their lives at the loss of their two daughters, who were childhood friends, in their attempt with an ever so strained encounter—a party.

Fascinating is the idea, but even more so is the afterthought one has of what it would be like for parents to lose their young children in a tragic mishap that could have been avoided.