Two Distant Strangers ' Travon Free on His Oscar-Winning Short Inspired by George Floyd's Murder

Travon Free is opening up about his short film, inspired by the murder of George Floyd, that nabbed him the Best Live Action Short Film honor at this year's Academy Awards.

The writer and director appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show Tuesday — the one-year anniversary of the day Floyd was killed by now-convicted former police officer Derek Chauvin — to talk about the process of bringing his film, Two Distant Strangers, to life.

In April, jurors found Chauvin, 45, guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter in the killing of Floyd, when the former officer pinned his knee to Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes. The 46-year-old's death was caught on a viral video that fueled a national reckoning on social justice, race and police brutality.

Wearing a shirt with the words "Arrest the Cops Who Killed Breonna Taylor," Free described his film as being about "a Black man trying to get home to his dog." But while the plot "sounds simple," he explained, "you can complicate that in many ways when you're telling a story about America."

"So he runs into a cop and the cop ends up killing him and he wakes up and the day starts all over again," the filmmaker told host Ellen DeGeneres. "He finds himself going through this loop, trying to figure out how to break the cycle of running into this cop and trying to change his behavior and do things different, and having the same memories of it."

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Facebook Travon Free (L); George Floyd

Michael Rozman/Warner Bros. Travon Free (L) on The Ellen DeGeneres Show

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Free went on to explain that the story was inspired by his desire "to try to demonstrate how there's nothing we can really do to stop it from happening, and that the actual solution lies beyond Black people."

Free — who wrote Two Distant Strangers, his directorial debut, in just five days — said he was moved to make the 29-minute film while participating in protests following Floyd's murder last summer, "absorbing the energy that the world had taken on once he had been killed."

"In doing that and repeating that cycle every day and internalizing the feelings you feel when you hear a new name — Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd," he shared. "As a Black person, you go through this cycle of emotions to process these things, and I found myself going through my cycle for these three different people and they were overlapping, and it just felt like living the worst version of Groundhog Day."

"When I had that thought, it was something that just stuck with me, and I felt like I had to do something with it," Free said.

Michael Rozman/Warner Bros. Travon Free on The Ellen DeGeneres Show

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Of taking home the Oscar, Free told DeGeneres, 63, that he was honored just to be nominated but thought his team "had a good shot" at winning.

"My fear was always that this film is about a subject matter that's so polarizing to people. Will it be embraced for all of its parts — the technicality, the story, the emotion, the work that we put into it? And could people see beyond their opinion on what they feel about the subject matter to look at the art form and what we created?" he said.

Free went on to say he was "nervous" that his story might be too "heavy" to win the award, compared to other nominees that were "easier to watch" and "not as confronting" as his film.

Addressing the storyline about the man wanting to get to his dog, he added: "It's such a calming thing to want to just go home to something or someone who loves you. And for us, we hear time and time again how those stories are impeded for reasons they shouldn't be impeded for, whether it's being stopped in your car [or walking down the street] for thinking you're the wrong person. It just felt like the easiest way for this story to connect beyond the color of your skin was to connect it to something we all want to do: just get home safely."

Two Distant Strangers is streaming on Netflix now.

To help combat systemic racism, consider learning from or donating to these organizations:

• Campaign Zero works to end police brutality in America through research-proven strategies.

• ColorofChange.org works to make the government more responsive to racial disparities.

• National Cares Mentoring Movement provides social and academic support to help Black youth succeed in college and beyond.