KEEP MUM TRAILER
KEEP MUM is an independent short film, an arthouse, psychological thriller, drama/horror set on the east coast of England, written and directed by London-based artist/filmmaker Luana Di Pasquale. KEEP MUM is also a short pilot for Di Pasquale’s debut feature film titled MY ENEMY WITHIN. The film stars Nadira Murray and her eight-year-old son Cameron and produced by Lisa Turnbull (Reblis Films) in association with QareyFilm.
Luana explains a little bit more about KEEP MUM.
“I was compelled to make KEEP MUM because I wanted to tell an original story about a subject dear to my heart. The challenge was how to tell it in 15 minutes and using very little dialogue. My connection to the subject treated in KEEP MUM stems from my personal experience of the trauma, secrecy and grief that are all part of the cycle of domestic violence. When I was a child, my aunt disappeared; though her body was never found she is now presumed dead. Only later in life the truth of her disappearance was revealed to me. And I came to realise how much this ugly secret had affected my psyche and the one of my family: the consequences of such a secret are as relentless as they are profound. And so, intending to explore the psychological and emotional trauma of the cycle of domestic abuse, paying particular attention to the children – the hidden victims of this endemic phenomenon – I wrote KEEP MUM.”
I decided to tell this story from Mum’s traumatised point of view, vivifying the multi-dimensionality of her character and the complexity of her dissociative state of mind, the mind of both victim and perpetrator. By using Mum’s trauma as a lens through which to explore the story, I also wished to challenge the perspective of the audience. The claustrophobic, haunting and surreal atmosphere, combined with and execabated by the ‘stream-of-consciousness’ use of cinematic narration, was created to make the audience to feel Mum’s inner struggle and delirium. Through the use of symbolism and metaphor, I wanted to invite the audience to join her as she tries to unravel meanings and make sense of the horrific circumstances in which she and her son have been living. The theme of isolation in KEEP MUM also engages with the topical theme of the immigrant experience and racial integration in the British family. The protagonist is a woman who is a foreign. Her appearance and accent emphasise the isolation she would have felt in an abusive relationship in a country foreign to her, and thus, arguably, her trauma is magnified by her immigrant status: there is a tacit implication running through the film that she is a woman with nowhere to go.
KEEP MUM was a magical and deeply heartfelt experience. When I completed the script I realised I have written it for my soul-mate friends, the actress Nadira Murray (Mum) and her eight-year-old son Cameron (Mum’s son, Danny). I then decided to shoot the film in a setting familiar to them, in Ramsgate, to attain a realistic sense of intimacy between mother and son, thus providing an emotive contrast with the horrific circumstances otherwise depicted. As it transpired, filming on the Kent coast was of particular consequence to the characterization of Danny. For example, Danny’s line, ‘SOS – Save Our Souls…’ was something Cameron kept saying in the car while we were location scouting. Hearing him say this, I felt it was right to have it in the script, and it soon became a leitmotif. There was something so honest – and, indeed, eerie – about Danny asking Mum to ‘Save their Souls’. I soon found myself basing all of Danny’s characterization on Cameron and his interests, especially his love of the sea.
My artistic choices as to the mise-en-scene and the editing were intended all-in-all to create a genre-bending short film that would reveal the real horror of domestic violence without showing the violence. The editing for example, is brutal, the frequent use of jump cuts give the narrative a disconcerting choppiness, which again is intended to make us empathise with Mum, whose mind is fragmented. I left the ending open because I wanted the character of Mum to remain morally ambiguous. Indeed, the film is one that encourages debate… Or, will the audience KEEP MUM about it? – Luana Di Pasquale
WATCH THE TRAILER BELOW
A woman wrecks her big family house. The atmosphere is eerie: something is not quite right. Soon it turns out that her past haunts her, throwing her into a whirlwind of emotions and projections as she tries to piece together what happened to her; the psyche of a woman pushed beyond the limits of sanity is explored…
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Hey KEEP MUM is on Amazon Prime UK and Plex TV
Can’t wait for this!