A brash young boy and his shy friend embark on a moonlit journey to get a tattoo.

Director’s Vision for ‘Midnight Ink’

“Midnight Ink” is a film about identity over a spectrum of time and the parts of ourselves that are lost with age. This film was developed during a time of great change in my life, crossing the threshold into adulthood, and feeling the emptiness of a clean slate after moving away from everyone I loved. The film was inspired by the feeling of mourning the loss of your former self, and the fear that you may grow into someone unrecognizable.

Alain is afraid of becoming a person he does not recognize, clinging to permanence at a time where everything about him is changing.

After the death of a loved one, Alain wrestles with concepts of aging and mortality for the first time. He suddenly and urgently wants a tattoo, hoping that some part of himself will remain after crossing the threshold of adolescence. This subject was enriched by a cast and crew composed of many people of transgender or non-binary experience. The desire to seize control of your own physical growth and re-affirm your identity permanently onto yourself is a pressure that uniquely affects this community and was a layer of meaning to the story that we had not foreseen prior to casting.

The boys interact with various characters along the way that may be emblematic of various losses and “deaths” of aging. This fear becomes more literal the further they get from home, exemplified when the boys’ physical bodies fail them just as they one day will with age. These existential subjects are expressed in ways that reflect the heightened lens of an imaginative and emotional kid: abstract, unclear, yet emotionally truthful to them.

As they navigate this strange and uncertain part of their lives, they walk through a void, reflecting how we all face the uncertain thought of our own mortality. In his haste, Alain selects a generic off-the-wall flash tattoo design rather than anything meaningful to him. After everything, he finds that the tattoo may represent the tough-kid façade he’s been wearing, not his authentic self.

We hope the film shines a light on the emotional capability of a child even at a young age, and presents a creative way to express that the inevitable changes of life are not something to be avoided or dominated, but rather embraced.