Filmmaker Statement

The idea for Mercy came when a friend and ex-sex worker told me the story of a client with whom he felt inexplicably paralysed with fear, trapped in a car driving to the client’s home. I used this story as the starting point to explore ideas around emotional inarticulacy and isolation, as well as repressed sexuality. I wanted to look at where and how shame manifests itself, and how we come to understand our own desires. People need touch, intimacy and real connections - but what can heal us is often fraught with doubt or pain accumulated over a lifetime. I wanted to move beyond a sensationalised depiction of sex work, instead exploring the at times tender humanity of these interactions, and the loneliness which we all search for ways to overcome.