Short Film: A SECRET BATTLE, 8min., USA, Drama

Mary is an introverted college student who just wants to get through a normal day as smoothly as possible. But when you are diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder it is anything but. Mary must face her OCD compulsions in every part of her daily life. We watch as the OCD thoughts are represented in human form as Mary is in constant conflict with herself. Although she tries to fight against these urges, she can’t help but give into the uncomfortable sensations and fears. Mary first wakes up and immediately has to obey the OCDs command as she must get rid of the anxiety feeling of not taking a deep enough breath. She then starts her day like anyone else. She opens her curtains and uses the restroom. But to others, walking into a room or washing your hands are simple tasks while for Mary they are excuses from her OCD to create compulsions to constrain Mary into one location. Mary finds herself being constantly trapped in unnecessary tasks as the OCD holds her in its grasp. Over time she becomes exhausted, but the fears continue to keep her captive in these never ending cycles. OCD has all the control and feels that their role is to keep Mary in check. Mary unfortunately is alone in this battle as not many know of her secret, and her friends only see this mental illness as a quirky trait to describe someone being tidy. As her day goes on, she finds herself becoming a puppet in the hands of her OCD. But when a mistake in the usual routine occurs, will Mary be able to pull every strength she has to move on or will her fear become too much to handle?

By femalefilmfestival

The irony of this festival is that its goal is to not be around in 5 years time. To eventually not be relevant because there is zero need to have a festival geared for female talent and female stories because the stories presented in Hollywood and around the world are a balanced showcase of the human experience from both sexes. Our goal is to achieve a lot of success and then fold into oblivion simply because there is no need for this festival. This festival was created by the FEEDBACK Film & Writing Festival as a simple reaction to a strong need to showcase female talent from around the world in a more profound way. When putting together the weekly festival, the administration noticed a lack of a female presence in the stories being shown at the festival. A classic example and analogy to the frustration is how the festival noticed that even the smaller roles in a screenplay were written for a man to play. There was zero reason for this in many stories. How a police officer, or a political campaign manager, for example with 3-4 lines in a screenplay was a "HE" character. Why? And these are the screenplays written by the winners! The talented one who have obtained agents and have began/beginning their careers as a writer.

Leave a comment

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: