RVA’s International Short Film Contest Awards: “Wrapper’s Journey” Portrays Creation as a Pilgrimage

The word journey comes from the old Latin idea of “diurnum” a day’s travel. A movement through time, space, and consequence. The Wrapper’s Journey reminds us that even the smallest things we discard begin their own pilgrimage, one we rarely follow.

The short film opens with a simple moment: a boy finishes a snack and carelessly throws away a plastic wrapper. What follows is not merely litter moving in the wind, but a stark narrative of our age. The wrapper travels, through dust, roadside grass, and eventually toward water. The camera lingers on landscapes that seem peaceful, yet carry the traces of human neglect. What began as a moment of consumption becomes a long ecological story.

In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis warns that “the earth, our common home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.” The film visualises that line with haunting simplicity. A plastic wrapper may take hundreds of years to decompose; meanwhile millions accumulate every day. Our convenience becomes creation’s burden.

Yet the film also tells us a deeper and darker story. In Christian thought, creation itself is on a journey. St. Augustine once wrote, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Everything longs for its proper place. Plastic, however, is the unnatural pilgrim, it does not belong to soil or sea, yet we send it there.

Watching the wrapper drift, I couldn’t help thinking of relationships. Words we throw carelessly, gestures we discard, like plastic, the hurt does not disappear quickly. Some wounds remain for years.

Technically, the film is beautifully crafted. The cinematography captures ordinary landscapes with poetic stillness, while the editing allows the wrapper itself to become the main character. The production team deserves credit for turning a mundane object into a moral mirror.

By the end, the question lingers: What journeys are we creating with the things we throw away?

Watch the film. Follow the wrapper. It may lead you back to yourself.