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For I Am Dead

“I’m finally free. I’m finally myself. And there’s nothing left to fear, for I am dead.”

In late-1800s Europe, Oscar, a wealthy but lonely middle-aged man who has lived a decadent, extravagant life in a chateau filled with wine, courtesans and opium, confesses love to his gardener Jude before he dies of his excesses.

  • Patricia Delso Lucas
    Director
  • Patricia Delso Lucas
    Writer
  • Patricia Delso Lucas
    Producer
  • Al Nazemian
    Key Cast
    "Oscar"
  • Riggsby Lane
    Key Cast
    "Jude"
  • Eszter Popp
    Key Cast
    "Courtesan 1"
  • Indira García
    Key Cast
    "Courtesan 2"
  • Laura Lahera
    Key Cast
    "Mother"
  • Madeleine Fletcher
    Key Cast
    "Maid"
  • Dominika Podczaska
    Cinematography
  • Tom Bourgeois
    Music
  • David Ferral
    Sound design
  • Miguel Peñaranda Olmeda
    Costume supervisor
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Car je suis mort
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Surreal drama, LGBTQ+
  • Runtime:
    18 minutes 19 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    November 5, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    10,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Belgium
  • Country of Filming:
    Belgium
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital (Arri Alexa Mini)
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Patricia Delso Lucas

PATRICIA DELSO LUCAS — DIRECTOR, SCREENWRITER AND PRODUCER

Patricia Delso Lucas is an independent screenwriter, film director and cinematographer (graduated from Skillset Screen Academy Scotland, with an MFA in Film Directing). www.patriciadelsolucas.com

She was born in Madrid in 1980 and she is currently based in Brussels, where she has lived since 2013. Her first steps in filmmaking were creative documentaries. Her graduation work, an autobiographical documentary titled "Just to Call You Dad", was nominated for the BAFTA Scotland New Talent Awards in 2010.

Then, she participated in various international workshops focused on fiction cinema: in screenplay at New York University (2011), at Sundance Shorts Lab (2011) and at Cineuropa.org (2021), in directing at Prague Film School (2015) and London Film School (2014, 2015, 2021), in cinematography at the Global Cinematography Institute Los Angeles (2017) and at Maine Media Workshops (2018), USA, in directing actors with Udayan Prasad in London (2017) and with Beatriz Flores Silva in Brussels (2018, 2019).

Her work ranges from narrative drama to black comedy, to westerns, audiovisual poems, experimental films and documentaries. The stories she feels drawn to writing and directing are heavily character-driven, and the audiovisual universe she builds around them often has a thin line between the real and the unreal.

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Director Statement

“A period piece. A dark, surreal drama. A story about unrequited love, self-acceptance and the limits of the sane mind.”
[ THE DIRECTOR ]

With the script of For I Am Dead, I wanted to show the personal and social struggle to accept the nature of who an individual is, when his/her desires or choices do not correspond to the majority. In this particular case, Oscar is fighting with his homosexuality, but this is just one of many possible incarnations portraying this dilemma.

I chose to set the story at this moment in time, the late 1800s, with the intention to accentuate the fact that these kinds of questions - still relevant today - were raised long ago, yet nothing has changed.

Will belonging to a minority ultimately end in tragedy?

This story can be extended to any situation of identity repression: Oscar being a victim of a time, an ideology, of himself; Jude being the response to him, in the form of love or hate.

Seen by the eyes of Oscar, the character of Jude embraces a duality between the kind and respectful young man he really is and the devil, the grotesque deformation Oscar projects onto him as a result of his tortured soul.

The unusual use of sound in the film, going in and out of sync, emphasizes Jude's duality and portrays Oscar's loss of sanity, who is no longer able to tell what's real and what's not. Despite his wealth and status, Oscar was never able to buy people’s minds, not even his own.

What I want to show with this film is what happens inside of a person when they are brutally denied the freedom to choose who they are, the right to define how they want to live.

In this story, Oscar finds relief from his anguish the moment he confesses his love to Jude, but he is rejected and the price to pay is death.

In any case and despite the consequences, this permission to be yourself should start from within.