"A Dive into Unspoken Pain"
Amidst cityscapes, an experimental short film unravels a woman's exploration of inner pain.
Social & External
The people behind it
Rheya McCowan
Woman
Max, haunted by the disappearance of his little sister Lara, lives as a recluse in a world filled with memories and visions of Lara. Unable to find peace, he desperately clings to the hope of finding her again, living in constant torment. This short film explores his descent into madness and his ultimate desire to be with his sister again.
Hannah is a seventeen-year-old girl who struggles to find her place in the world. Around the time that she gives up all hope of fitting in, her grandfather falls ill. She and her brother, Charlie, drive up the coast of West Michigan in order to visit him on his deathbed. However, their journey north takes a turn after their car breaks down in rural Michigan, and Hannah's search for meaning grows more crucial than ever.
Faced with the need to care for her mother, a woman moves into a condominium she had never visited before. However, little did she know how the men who lived there would react when they met her.
"Lovebirds" is a short film that explores the aftermath of a collapsed relationship between Masoud and his beloved fiancée Maniya. Their love affair was based on sadomasochistic tendencies and childish mischiefs that kept the flame of their love burning. But when the girl unexpectedly ends the relationship and leaves without a word, Masoud is left in a state of mourning, struggling to accept the end of their love and move on...
A literary film based on a play in three acts, One Day Before the Rainy Season (Ashad Ka Ek Din) portrays the love of Mallika and Kalidasa, the renowned Sanskrit poet and dramatist. Vilom, a friend to both and interested in Mallika, is a passive onlooker for the first two acts. Kalidasa leaves his verdant mountain valley home for the splendour of far off Ujjain, where he wins fame. The action of the film is rooted in the village to which Kalidasa returns years later and finds Mallika married to Vilom and the mother of his child. Mallika sacrificed her love so that the poet could pursue his muse.
Alters and substance abuse
A prom queen-to-be must break free from her small town’s ominous legacy of prom queens who die after their crowning.
A short film I directed.
Today in France, one in five young people suffers from severe depressive symptoms, and the number of minors visiting psychiatric emergency rooms has tripled in the last five years. Despite the political will that has been demonstrated, child psychiatry is nevertheless faced with a severe lack of resources. The interminable waiting times for treatment are causing a surge in prescriptions for psychotropic drugs.
This documentary follows two long-lost Ukrainian friends, Arsalan and Nastya, as they reconnect in Germany after russia's full-scale invasion against Ukraine. Arsalan, an actor now in Frankfurt after time in a refugee camp, and Nastya, journalist and producer who stayed in Kyiv, reflect on the divergent paths their lives have taken due to the war. Through their conversations and therapy sessions, the film explores themes of displacement, identity, and the emotional impact of war on youth.
A head chef balances multiple personal and professional crises at a popular restaurant in London.
Friendship and rebellion - but how will a secret play out in the masculine world of motocross? Willy and Jojo are best friends. They share a passion for motocross - whereas Willy uses it to honour his deceased father, it is only by excelling in the sport that Jojo’s father will notice him. Also the masculine world or racing is perfectly suited to suppress their own insecurities. Yet when Willy one fateful night discovers the hidden love life of Jojo, he will be forced to take sides in the wave of homophobia that follows.
Doina, a shepherd’s wife in ancient Romania, turns her daily routine into ritual. When nature foretells his death, her journey through grief blends realism, myth, and magic, where despair meets imagination.
Caye is a young prostitute whose family is unaware of her profession. She meets her striking Dominican neighbour Zulema, an illegal immigrant, after she finds her in the bathroom, badly beaten up. They strike up a close friendship unbeknownst to Caye's xenophobic co-workers.
Sophie Jacobs is going through the most difficult time of her life. Now, she just has to find out if it's real.
Brujeria is the Spanish word for witchcraft. Both men and women can be witches, brujos and brujas, respectively. A brujo controls much of the dance and chaos surrounding this troupe. When a young stagehand enters the would of this secluded dance retreat, it upsets the balance of the retreat's lead dancer a couple comprised of a lesbian and a bisexual woman. When the bisexual woman finds herself attracted to the stagehand, their relationship is tested, and the ensuing chaos feeds the brujeria.
A widower gains a new lease of life thanks to a chance encounter with a laundrette owner.
Daniel seeks catharsis by recalling with Sofía his past relationship.
Suffering from a severe case of depression, toy company CEO Walter Black begins using a beaver hand puppet to help him open up to his family. With his father seemingly going insane, adolescent son Porter pushes for his parents to get a divorce.
An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.
On the outside, Helen has it all – a loving family and a successful career – but when her suppressed mental illness resurfaces, the world crumbles around her. Crippled by depression, Helen finds solace through her friendship with Mathilda, a kindred spirit struggling with bipolar disorder.
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
A woman watches time pass beside the suitcases of her ex-lover (who is supposed to come pick them up but never arrives) and a restless dog who doesn't understand that his master has abandoned him.
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
Four siblings' lives change drastically when their ailing mother takes a turn for the worse over the holiday season.
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
A story set on the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, which exploded during April 2010 and created the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?
Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.
The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.
Nothing is as it seems when a woman experiencing misgivings about her new boyfriend joins him on a road trip to meet his parents at their remote farm.
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
Seasoned deep-sea divers battle the raging elements to rescue their crewmate trapped hundreds of feet below the ocean's surface.
Nola grew up living in a van with her father, Clint—two nomads against the world. When tragedy strikes, Nola must confront the reality of life on the road alone, learning to own her grief, her past, and her new destination.
The government gets wind of a plot to destroy America involving a trio of nuclear weapons for which the whereabouts are unknown. It's up to a seasoned interrogator and an FBI agent to find out exactly where the nukes are.
Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the thin line between normal and crazy. Susanna soon realizes how hard it is to get out once she has been committed, and she ultimately has to choose between the world of people who belong inside or the difficult world of reality outside.
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.