Filmmaker Statement

Graduating college into a tumultuous 2020 full of pain and self-discovery left me feeling changed — I felt closer to my true self but simultaneously felt distant from the self I had known the rest of my adolescence. How could I feel so close yet so distant from my identity? What does it mean for my understanding of myself, and for the people I love, if there is no single, constant me? I wrote these feelings into the mind of my protagonist and personified the inner disconnect with the doppelgänger. The doppelgänger has often been used as a horror trope. It’s likely that seeing one's self would lead anyone spiraling into insanity, causing us to question our own identities. However, what if these fears were unfounded? Instead of losing a sense of identity by seeing ourselves, what if this outside perspective actually allowed us to have a better understanding of who we are? I hope to subvert the classical horror trope by revealing the doppelgänger to not be the problem, but the solution.