A psychological thriller about a woman who is paranoid that her boyfriend is cheating on her, but when she forces herself out of her shell, she realizes it is her alter-ego.
Director’s Statement
The mental and emotional state of humans is a very internal process and one that we can all relate to, it is something that can be very scary. This film, Violet is about the pain one feels, that develops over time, stemming in most cases from past trauma, and how that can get in the way of our relationships. I wanted to tell a story about this idea of searching for one’s self. I worked to bring that into a visual form and surrounded it with the conflicts of fighting with your boyfriend, paranoia and low self esteem and literally chasing the thing you suspect is causing all the pain, but finding your own face staring back at you. As these experiences can be very frightening and confusing to face, I wanted to use the genre: psychological thriller, to help convey that.
There is a visual metaphor that I use in the film, the image of a cocoon. This can be interpreted in many different ways as a transformational message, or process of growth, and I hope that people can find their own connection to it and hopefully be entertained and challenged with this beautiful piece of work. Violet is based on an original story entitled Pale, written by Matthew Gasda, which won best short film at London film awards and after it’s successful festival run was adapted into a feature film screenplay by Gasda and I. The screenplay after being developed for about a year, needed some sort of visual representation, so we took pieces of it and made Violet.