Trapped inside an indulgent masquerade party, a bankrupt opportunist tests his fate with 3 different masks of temptation. With an insidious oil baron after his wife’s Estate, Maxwell is faced with a series of choices that have unimaginable consequences. Will his soul find redemption, or will he be consumed by his own appetites?

Directors Vision

When I began writing Masks of Desire, I was considering the distractions in my life. I was contemplating all of the vices and temptations that were distracting me from the important things; the instant gratification inherent to our culture that prevents us from finding real purpose and meaning. “Sex,” “money,” and “power”; these are the central allures of this “cult of the self” ideology that we chose to engage with. We wanted to tell a story about lust, where the protagonist was fixated on each of these three temptations. A story where the morally righteous choice becomes obscured, replaced by temptations that literally consume the protagonist and trap him within this cycle. This became the framework for the film.

The story is modern but the characters and struggles are timeless. We were of course inspired by Kubrick and especially Eyes Wide Shut, attempting to imagine the worlds and psychologies of others characters existing within the films infamous Masquerade Ball. The deeper themes of Masks of Desire exist in a departure from conventions and into more esoteric aesthetics and symbology. Inherent to the structure of the film, we wanted to show that lust, and desire of the ego in general, is insatiable; that no amount of sex, money, or power is ever enough. Our protagonist is trapped in a loop of temptation and follows each of these paths to their fateful outcome…