A sleep-deprived composer and new mother retreats to a remote house to finish a film score, but as her music distorts and ghostly figures gather at the edge of the garden, she begins to fear she is losing her mind—or becoming a danger to her child.
Director’s Vision for ‘Winter Song’
I had my first baby in 2020, during the global pandemic. With no visitors, no rituals, and no external structure, the intensity of caring for a vulnerable newborn — whom I loved more than anything — pressed into every waking, barely sleeping moment. At the same time, I felt compelled to continue working as before, spending nights trying to write or edit, only to be pulled back by the baby monitor. The isolation was profound. A UCL study later found that rates of postnatal depression doubled during lockdown, with many mothers describing the burden of “constant motherhood.”
While early motherhood was also the most joyful time of my life, ‘Winter Song’ seeks to explore its darker psychological terrain through a language of poetic, gothic horror. The blood, intrusive thoughts, and sleep deprivation of this period can push perception toward fragmentation, blurring the boundary between reality and hallucination. I wanted to create a cinematic waking dream — less a conventional narrative than a progression of moods and sensations — that invites the audience inside a fragile, disintegrating state of mind.
