Experimental silent short film shot on Super8, hand processed in a lab.

In the winter of 2020-21, I fell into the deepest pit of depression I've ever experienced. I hardly even possess a few snippets of lucidity that I can remember from a period of a full half year. So many things compounded into this dense anchor in my chest dragging me down to that place. The isolation. My general lack of direction in life spawned a ceaseless existential crisis as my 20th birthday loomed large. The Minnesotan winter piled snow at the doors which oppressively kept me in. I finally broke my way out into the light but quickly found myself reeling from how blinding that light turned out to be. Wasn't this where I was supposed to be? Why were those light rays so vicious, raining down on me, not like salvation, but like knives? I wanted to retreat back into the darkness I then falsely remembered as a blanketing comfort.

A film about this experience has been gestating in me for two years, and I returned to school this year with clarity and a drive to be a filmmaker and the perfect opportunity to make it happen. I couldn't start with anything but this.