A young woman, tired from her daily routine, falls asleep on the train ride home. What happens next is unfortunately predictable. She awakes to find a man doing something so wildly inappropriate, it will have a lasting and damaging effect on her perspective of the world and the people around her. In this extremely personal film, Cheer Up Baby, writer/director/editor Adinah Dancyger explores the systemic desentization to sexual harassment and its rippling effects, by creating an atmosphere narrative certain to leave her audience shaken and uncomfortable. As a teenager in high school, Dancyger went through a similar disturbing event. Just like her lead character, after falling asleep on the train, which at the time felt like a normal and safe thing, she woke up to a stranger holding her hand and whispering compliments to her. As one would imagine, or knows, such a disturbing interaction triggers anxiety, fear and shame in the following days and it’s the aftermath of this incident where the focus of Cheer Up Baby lies.
