Travon Free says he wrote Oscar-winning short 'Two Distant Strangers' in five days

Two Distant Strangers won the Oscar under the short film (live action) category at the 93rd Academy Awards on April 25.

That was 30 days ago.

And that is 25 more days than it took Travon Free to write Two Distant Strangers.

"You wrote this in five days," Ellen DeGeneres said to Free on Tuesday's episode of her daytime talk show. "But first of all, we should say that today is the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. And you got the idea while you were protesting about that."

Free, wearing a shirt saying "ARREST THE COPS WHO KILLED BREONNA TAYLOR," then explained his creative process:

"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—as a Black person, you go through this cycle of emotions to process these things. And I found myself going through that cycle for these three different people, and they were overlapping, and it just felt like living the worst version of Groundhog Day, and when I had that thought, it was something that just stuck with me. And I felt like I had to do something with it."