AllMovie

Julie Talen, perhaps best-known as the screenwriter who adapted Harriet the Spy for the big screen, makes her directorial debut with this digital feature. Utilizing nine DV cameras to create a multichannel narrative that involves up to 16 panels in the frame at a time, Pretend is the story of two young girls who hatch a plan to keep their divorcing parents together. By pretending that one of the girls has been kidnapped, the siblings hope to push their mother and father back together. Pretend played at the 2003 Vancouver Film Festival.