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“One of the Most Delicate Challenges I’ve Faced as a Filmmaker”: Kevin Haefelin on His Student Short Film Showcase Winner The Fuse
In The Fuse, an elderly sanitation worker named Cassius (non-professional actor Jorge Gabino) decides to quietly shuffle himself off of this mortal coil. Written and directed by Kevin Haefelin as part of his MFA studies at Columbia University, the narrative may not provide direct context for Cassius’ fatal decision, but it certainly does make it difficult for him to complete his morbid task.
When a fuse blows out and makes electrocution an unviable option, Cassius traverses his Bronx neighborhood looking for a quick-fix to get his plan back on track. Black comedy abounds, pointing to the universe’s general indifference to our wavering moods: humor does not cease to exist even if we’re not in the mood to appreciate it, and opportunistic abusers don’t care to understand that they’re just kicking us while we’re down. Yet even amid the world’s cruel and absurd whims, perseverance ultimately pays off.
The Fuse is one of five winners of the 2024 Student Short Film Showcase, a collaborative program from The Gotham, Focus Features and JetBlue that is available to stream via Focus Features’s YouTube channel and offered in the air as part of JetBlue’s in-flight entertainment selection.
I asked Haefelin a few questions via email, and the Swiss-born filmmaker provided insight on his decision to pursue his master’s degree in New York City, the lucid dream that brought the film’s protagonist to life and the guiding light provided by Italian neorealism.
Read the rest of the interviews with the fifth annual Student Short Film Showcase winners here.
Filmmaker: You’re a Swiss native and currently live between New York, Geneva and Tokyo. What made you choose Columbia University’s directing and screenwriting program for your MFA?
Haefelin: Growing up in Switzerland, I studied at the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD), where I received an auteur-driven education grounded in the intersection of fiction and documentary. That training laid the foundation for my filmmaking—instilling an observational lens and a poetic sensitivity to the human experience. But after completing my undergraduate studies, I felt the urge to go deeper, to truly find my voice as a director and screenwriter. I had long been inspired by the New York indie cinema scene—its grit, intimacy, and emotional rawness—and after careful research, Columbia University stood out as the only school that fully aligned with my vision. It was a place that championed risk-taking, personal storytelling, and international perspectives. During my six years in New York completing the MFA, I not only honed my craft but also created my NYC trilogy—Tight Spot, Trumpet, and culminating in The Fuse. That period was profoundly transformative, both artistically and personally. The trilogy recently gave way to a fourth NYC short film, Clay, which I’ve just completed and is currently awaiting its world premiere. In contrast to The Fuse, which follows a character at the dusk of his life, Clay is told entirely from the perspective of a baby as she journeys through the city. It’s a poetic meditation on growth, self-discovery, and transformation—a film that revisits the themes I’ve always been drawn to, but through an entirely new lens.
I now split my time between New York, Geneva, and Tokyo—three cities that deeply inform my current work. At the moment, I’m developing three feature films, each rooted in one of those locations: an arthouse supernatural thriller set in the Japanese countryside, a surreal drama centered on a Japanese diaspora family in New York City, and a coming-of-age autobiographical story set in Europe. These stories all originated from time spent living in those places and, together, they reflect the spectrum of cinematic voices that continue to move and inspire me.
Filmmaker: Where did the idea for The Fuse and its central character come from?
Haefelin: The idea for The Fuse emerged during the deeply unsettling period of the pandemic—a time when the world as we knew it seemed to unravel. The immense suffering and vulnerability I witnessed, particularly among essential workers and underserved communities, moved me profoundly. COVID didn’t just expose cracks in our systems—it split them wide open. The precarity of life, the widening gap between social classes, and the realization that everything could be lost overnight became impossible to ignore. The keywords that guided my vision were: uncertainty, inequality, solitude, resilience, and hope.
In the midst of that chaos, I had a lucid dream—haunting and vivid—about a man whose life and home were destroyed by hoodlums. That image stayed with me. As I sat with it, I began connecting it to the societal discourse of the time: the overuse of words like “essential” and “hero,” often used to mask the disposability with which many of these same workers were treated. From that reflection came my character, Cassius.
Cassius is a modern-day gladiator—aging, invisible, yet deeply dignified. He works quietly as a sanitation worker, picking up the remnants of other people’s lives while trying to hold his own together. He is indispensable, yet unseen. In a way, Cassius is all of us—navigating loneliness, fear, and exhaustion, still trying to make sense of a world that keeps shifting beneath our feet. He’s a character who suppresses his own needs just to keep functioning, but beneath the surface, there’s a well of emotion, humor, and love. I wanted The Fuse to serve as a poetic fable about New York, where comedy could soften the blow, and empathy could light the darkest corridors.
Filmmaker: How did you come to cast your lead actor Jorge Gabino?
Haefelin:My most memorable experience while making The Fuse was witnessing the birth of an actor. I cast Jorge Gabino directly from the streets of New York—he had never acted before. Jorge had worked many jobs, including as a sanitation worker, but stepping in front of a camera was entirely new to him. I can’t describe what I felt while filming him. He had such a presence, and his authenticity, strength, and love pierced the lens, so I rewrote parts of the script to fit closer to Jorge’s experience. This approach of casting non-professional actors was deeply inspired by the Italian neorealists of the 1940s and ’50s, particularly Vittorio De Sica, whose films Umberto D and Bicycle Thieves profoundly influenced me.
I adopted this technique throughout my NYC trilogy, and it taught me an invaluable lesson about the transformative power cinema can hold. Especially now, as we navigate yet another turbulent period in the world, I believe we need more of these authentic human stories—grounded in reality and highlighting genuine human struggles—to remind us of our shared humanity.
Filmmaker: The Fuse depicts a suicide attempt with empathy and a sense of humor. What were the challenges of striking this balance while employing adequate sensitivity toward the topic?
Haefelin: Striking that balance was one of the most delicate challenges I’ve faced as a filmmaker. From the outset, I knew I wanted to approach the subject of suicide with honesty and emotional nuance—never sensationalizing it, never reducing it to a narrative device. Suicide, especially among older adults, is often met with silence. I felt a deep responsibility to handle it with care, while still embracing the absurdities and contradictions that make life, even at its bleakest, strangely alive. Sometimes, it’s in those darkest moments that humor quietly lingers.
What guided me throughout was a commitment to emotional truth. I wasn’t interested in melodrama. I saw Cassius as someone who’s been silently bearing too much for too long—trying to stay afloat in a world that barely sees him. When that dam finally cracks, yes, it’s tragic—but it’s also deeply human. There’s something almost disarmingly funny in the way he tries to orchestrate his “exit” with a sense of dignity the world continually withholds from him. And within that comedy lies a profound sorrow.
Empathy was our guiding principle across every stage of the filmmaking process. In post-production, for instance, I worked closely with long-time collaborators—sound mixer Loïc Gourbe and foley artist Florian Penot—to craft a soundscape that could hold space for both quiet melancholy and unexpected levity. Humor, in this context, wasn’t used to undercut the gravity of the subject—it became a survival instinct. A way of saying, “Even in despair, there’s still life.”
Ultimately, The Fuse is a story of resilience—a portrait of a man on the brink who, against all odds, finds a reason to keep going. That moment of near-loss becomes a turning point not through some grand gesture, but through the quiet rediscovery of human connection and self-worth. And I think that’s something many of us can recognize in ourselves.
Filmmaker: What about the film’s New York City setting was most crucial for you and your team to capture? Can you share details about scouting shooting locations?
Haefelin: The most crucial for me to capture about New York City was its dual nature—how beauty and ugliness can exist side by side, often inseparably intertwined. While spending time in the city, I encountered so many different aspects of it, each of which inspired and enriched my trilogy. Each film—Tight Spot, Trumpet, and The Fuse—represents a distinct facet of New York as I discovered it, portrayed through poetic visual storytelling that walks the line between the mundane and the extraordinary.
If you watch the films sequentially, there’s a gradual evolution: a movement from a more theatrical interpretation of the city toward a grounded realism. That trajectory reflects my personal journey through the vibrant complexity of New York—how, over time, the city began to reveal itself not only in grand gestures but in subtle, fleeting moments of beauty and truth. I’ve always believed that cities, like people, don’t have to make perfect sense. It’s enough that they offer reasons to keep believing.
Scouting locations is never a separate task—it’s part of the storytelling. I don’t see location as a backdrop; it’s a living character. I often rewrite the story based on the place I’m shooting. And scouting locations generate ideas for the script itself. In New York, that process felt particularly alive. Its textures, its rhythms, its contradictions—they constantly gave me inspiration for new ideas.
Filming here isn’t easy—tight spaces, unpredictable noise, the pace that refuses to slow down—but that’s also what makes it unlike anywhere else. There’s an energy, a restlessness, and a collaborative spirit that elevates everything. What defines New York for me is that, even amid all the chaos and uncertainty, there’s always a subtle glimmer of hope. And that, above all, is what I try to capture.
