Born in Dublin, I grew up in Sardinia, Italy where I lived until 2020, when I returned home to Ireland to study at the National Film School. My graduate short film, Florence is an unconventional thriller set in a dark fictional world. Florence works for the Echo Grief Centre, where actors are hired to recreate the memories of bereaved clients in an attempt to remedy their regrets. Florence’s anxieties surrounding her pregnancy escalate when she meets Angel, a young girl auditioning to be an actor at the centre. My filmmaking can’t help but be linked to my view of the world and my simple belief that we are here to keep each other company. What interests me are the connections we share in life, what we leave to and hold of one another. But despite being each other’s reason for being, these relationships are often complex and conflicting. My fictional work centres around these contradictions of human relation. Creating imaginary realities, I aim to explore the psychological extremes of our own world beyond the limitations of traditional realism. With Florence I wished to explore the extremity of the relationship between mother and child, specifically the contradictory feelings that can surface during pregnancy. The heart of the story is Florence’s relationship to Angel, a bond wrapped up in the anxieties of bringing a child into an environment that is inhospitable, a dangerous home that we are helpless to control. My intention was to avoid offering a solution or an answer to Florence’s struggle. Instead, I wanted to encourage an active engagement with these thematic questions.
