Plastic Bag

Struggling with its immortality, a discarded plastic bag ventures through the barren remains of America as it searches for its maker.

Series
FUTURESTATES
Premiere Date
March 5, 2010
Length
19 minutes
Funding Initiative
Short-Form Series and Special Projects
Director

Ramin Bahrani

RAMIN BAHRANI was born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and is an Emmy-nominated writer, director and producer. In 2010 legendary film critic Roger Ebert proclaimed Bahrani as “the director of the decade.” Bahrani has won numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a “Someone to Watch” Independent Spirit Award. His feature… Show more films, Man Push Cart, Chop Shop, Goodbye Solo, At Any Price, and 99 Homes have won numerous awards around the world, including the FIPRESCI Prize in London (Man Push Cart) FIPRESCI Prize in Venice (Goodbye Solo), the Grand Prize in Deauville (99 Homes) and a Golden Globe nomination for Michael Shannon (99 Homes). Bahrani’s television film, Fahrenheit 451, for HBO, starring Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon was nominated for 5 Emmys, including Best TV Movie. His most recent documentary, Blood Kin, premiered at the 2018 Venice Film Festival where he also served as President of the Debut Film Jury. His latest film is an adaptation of the Man Booker Prize winning novel, The White Tiger, for Netflix. It will be released in late 2020. Show less

Other ITVS Films
Goodbye Solo

We fund untold stories for public media.

Learn more about funding opportunities with ITVS.

MORE INFO

The Film

This short film by American director Ramin Bahrani (Goodbye Solo) traces the epic, existential journey of a plastic bag (voiced by Werner Herzog) searching for its lost maker, the woman who took it home from the store and eventually discarded it. Along the way, it encounters strange creatures, experiences love in the sky, grieves the loss of its beloved maker, and tries to grasp its purpose in the world.

In the end, the wayward plastic bag wafts its way to the ocean, into the tides, and out into the Pacific Ocean trash vortex — a promised nirvana where it will settle among its own kind and gradually let the memories of its maker slip away.

Topics