OrganicMeet (2024)
An aimless young woman attempts to meet her soulmate using OrganicMeet, a new-age match-making service that encourages single hopefuls to meet in a grocery store, organically.
OrganicMeet explores the challenges of finding love and meaning in a world marred by dating apps and social media. It premiered in April of 2024 at the Phoenix Film Festival, winning Best College Short. A month later, it won Best Student Film at the Big Apple Film Festival. The short also screened in the Beverly Hills Film Festival and the Los Angeles Lift-Off Film Festival.
I think our cultural fixation on romantic love has real, even dangerous, consequences. From the moment I first stared at a television screen, I can remember watching shows and movies that preached about a perfect love, all so that now, in my twenties, I feel for the first time this overwhelming pressure to be an adult and to find it. And I know this is an urge I share with others. It's a false thought to young minds: the irony of being in your twenties and feeling like you're running out of time.
OrganicMeet speaks to my own insecurities about finding a ‘soulmate’ and fitting into traditional molds of romance that have been established before me. Feeling my own imagination oversaturated with stories that tell the tale of the perfect someone out there, I wanted to speak to the power that love, and lack thereof, can have in revealing us to ourselves. As messy, confusing, and painful as the search for love can be, it can also be deeply transformative and rewarding in our own self-discovery. My hope is for OrganicMeet to deliver this message.
-Robert Shaffer Jr.
Director’s Statement
“One of my favorites from the fest and one of the best student films I’ve seen overall.”
— Biagio Gulino, Programmer at Big Apple Film Festival
“A cinematic testament to the complexities of love and human connection in the 21st century.”
— Chandler Christopher, HappenTwice
