In the near future, criminals are given a choice – go to prison or get their memories wiped and replaced with fictional ones so they can make a positive contribution to society. Charlotte (Charlotte Coleman), a doctor at the Memory Replacement Institute begins to question her own reality when a patient claiming to be her wife (Eve Carson) begs her to save their daughter.

A Positive Contribution is a dystopian drama about choosing between comfortable lies or devastating truths.

Director’s Vision for ‘A Positive Contribution’

I’ve always been drawn to films that can tell compelling stories in limited settings with few characters, so when Heather approached me with her script (based on a short story by Bree Mitchell), it immediately captivated me. The idea of exploring the inner lives of characters in such an intimate way, but at the same time building a whole dystopian world around it within the confines of a single location was an exciting challenge. A challenge in making APC was building this dystopian world in the single space we had. But it also allowed us to keep the psychology of the characters at the centre of this film. Dystopian films are able to delve into the human psyche in moments of heightened reality, which was certainly the case for Heather’s brilliant script. This naturally led us to maintain quite a subtle tone to the film as we wanted Charlotte’s emotional turmoil to be the focal point of the film, while also letting the oppressive nature of this world permeate. At its core, APC asks whether it’s better to face a painful truth or to live a comfortable lie. It’s a question which we don’t have an answer to, as we chose to leave this question open for the audience to draw their own conclusions.