Can I Get a Witness? tells the story of a mother and daughter in a near-future world where huge sacrifices are made to maintain life on Earth.
With its resources swallowed by e-waste and overpopulation, the world is experiencing an anthropogenic collapse. To manage, technological advances are shunned. Nobody has electricity and only people with exceptions are permitted cars. Most importantly, there is also a collective agreement that nobody is allowed to live beyond the age of 50.
Oh’s Ellie lives with her teenage daughter Kiah (Keira Jang), who is starting her first day as a Documenter, an important role in this new world order. She uses her artistic gifts — beautifully conjured in animations — to draw the dying ceremonies, since printing and photography have been banned.
Kiah is paired with Daniel (Joel Oulette), the young man who performs the contractual elements of each person’s end-of-life ceremony. He matter-of-factly provides the packages a person can choose, sets them up when the time comes, and performs the burials. But his new coworker is having a hard time handling the emotional impacts of the job.