Projects

Dear Insects and Other Creepy Stories

A worn-down socialist concrete building. Seven apartments. Seven different stories. Seven nightmares.

synopsis

A worn-down socialist building in the suburbs, heat wave 40+ degrees. In seven apartments, seven creepy stories, all connected by Miro, the janitor. He spots a cockroach entering the building and he is determined to hunt it down. Meanwhile, we follow the tenants who desperately want to feel needed and stay relevant in the lives of their loved ones and in society; a young woman adopts a refugee and keeps him trapped inside her apartment to take very good care of him; a woman diagnosed of cancer spends the last 30 days of her life searching for a sold-out red dress for her daughter’s graduation as she will not be present for the event; a retired woman wants to preserve fish from rotting that she bought with her last retirement money, as her son is finally coming for dinner after 10 years, but she dies frozen with the fish. Miro is now seeing cockroaches everywhere, falling into madness while they multiply, multiply, multiply... and multiply. Will the cockroaches take over the building?

Director’statement

Kafkaesque, unsettling, and eerie with loud silences and expressive or gloomy lighting. It is about the creepy in the ordinary. The images and setting that seem to recall our nightmares are grounded in reality and everyday life, but with a stylistic approach that includes elements of horror, creating occasional creepy moments that represent our fears and subconscious. But they are part of life and are real. And precisely therefore, these gruesome moments are funny. The sound landscape of realism will be combined with some accents and exaggerations to create auditory stimuli to evoke chills from our everyday lives. Creepy everyday life sounds also come from the setting of a summer heat wave: the buzzing of flies around rotten fish, mini steps of cockroaches walking on the floors and walls, blood dripping, apartment doors creaking and banging, wind, squeaks, the sound of the air conditioner humming, muffled sounds from other apartments, moving furniture.

TFL PROGRAMME:
SeriesLab 2024

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