Filmmaker Statement

Everything about this film is profoundly personal to me, and to my experiences. Grief is quite present in our culture— it is an integral part of the human experience. However, I’ve always felt that there was a level of dishonesty with which we treated the act of grieving, and dissected it into stages. Absent grief is not as logical; it is a chaos of countless emotions that leaves one feeling nothing but numbing. The steps appear to fall out the window. À LA FONTAINE // THE FLOWER DARKENS is my first fiction project, and I made it a priority to tell a story that was authentic. The subject matter we’re dealing with is entirely too complex to fully dissect in 13 minutes, which was never my intention. I made it a goal to create a singular case study out of a personal life experience, if nothing else. Grief is the ultimate isolator, and Alice is navigating that fact intuitively — like anyone would.