Multiple award-winning filmmaker P. David Ebersole's short film DEATH IN VENICE, CA evokes the memory of Thomas Mann's novella in order to tell a tragic parable about repression, obsession and the haunting threat of catching one's death through falling in love.

Starring British actor Nick Rafter, two-time Academy Award-nominated actress Shirley Knight and introducing Rob Keith as 18-year old Sebastian, DEATH IN VENICE, CA centers around the summer vacation of Mason Carver, a scholar of romantic love who finally finds the passion he has studied but never known. Will Mason discover the courage to match Sebastian's passion for life--to embrace this last opportunity to become the man he might have been? Or will he retreat back into the security that comes with an interminable existence of measured out unhappiness? As Mason says in his narration, "When a man finds himself asking such questions, he is doomed to find out the answers, whether he wants to or not."