Inhabitant

Director's Statement

Why I made it

After Call 154, I wanted to make something a lot more technically complicated, and I wanted it to be about self-abandonment and limerent love. I wanted to talk about the parts of ourselves we give up to keep other people happy. Not just in romance, but in work, in friendships, in everything. What do we become when we keep choosing other people?

Inhabitant uses food as the allegory: all the small, harmless-looking choices we make for someone else that add up to losing ourselves. Light shows how we dim ourselves for other people. Thread and ribbon show how easy it is to get tied to someone when your worth depends on their approval.

Everyone is online now, and we're more disconnected than ever. I want to talk about how we connect with ourselves and with each other, where the boundaries are, and what happens when we go too far.

Making a film about chasing someone at all costs, we caught ourselves doing the same thing: putting the movie ahead of our own needs. So we made a rule on set. No one self-abandons. Nobody was allowed to ignore their own needs, and we brought on more people to share the load and keep everyone safe. It was a little ironic. We had to look at our own behavior while making a movie about that exact behavior.

What I hope people take away: choose the cookie. Pick yourself.

I'm grateful to everyone who gave their time and energy to make this real. Some of the most expensive therapy I've ever paid for, but worth every penny.