Festival Season:
October 2026
THE BENCH
Directors:
Writers:
Rory Duffy
Rory Duffy
Producers:
Rory Duffy
Run Time:
0:17:52
Awarded for the following Category(s):
Awarded Category(s)
The Bench is a throw back to the silent era of film. With a sweeping original classical score, 'The Bench' examines the many different characters who sit on a park bench one beautiful autumn day. Comedy, and suspense is beautifully balanced in this charming silent film written and directed by Rory Duffy of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
Submitter Statement
The Bench came from two heartbreaks.
After a breakup, I found myself struggling both personally and professionally in Los Angeles. With no work, I began volunteering at a local Catholic soup kitchen. One morning, while exercising in a park, I recognized a man I had served there. I went over to say hello. He screamed at me.
I was startled. The park had always felt like a safe place to me, but for him, it was a place of danger. In that moment, I began thinking about all the different things a bench could mean to the people who sit on it. The idea stayed with me, dormant, for several years—until another heartbreak.
Down in the dumps, I was watching Three Stooges videos on YouTube to cheer myself up when I stumbled upon Chaplin’s “The Lion Cage” from The Circus. I laughed like a child. Chaplin was the most beautiful actor I had ever seen on film. I became obsessed with him and with silent cinema. Then I realized that The Bench, the idea I’d carried with me since Los Angeles, had to be a silent film.
I funded the film myself and brought together a crew of people who helped make it possible. We shot it in two days. It was edited in Los Angeles by the woman who let me sleep on her couch, colored by a classmate from City College’s MA history program, and scored with my best friend. We recorded the music in a bedroom we had turned into a studio.
The Bench is a personal crowning achievement. Heartbreak will happen. What matters is what you do with it.
I made The Bench.
Rory Duffy is an award winning documentary filmmaker, and adjunct professor of United States history at City College of New York. As an actor, Rory has had recurring roles on Blue Bloods, Law and Order SVU, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. His masters thesis on the John F. Kennedy Administration won the Judith Stein Prize in Political Economy. On stage and screen, he has worked with director Hal Hartley, Academy Award winner Jeremy Irons, and Amy Sherman-Palladino.
His production company Maci Duffy Productions, which he co-runs with his wife Hyun Joo Lee, produces films with a concentration on history, politics, and art.
Key Cast
Other Credits