Hot Mess

I'm one of those director's that likes to draw from personal experience and Hot Mess is directly inspired by my recent discovery of having ADHD... and how that might be linked to the verbal and emotional abuse I also experienced growing up.

I'd always struggled to manage my life, especially in early adulthood. I found that I had to work so much harder to equal the efforts of others and I had no idea why. I felt like a failure and I felt broken. Some of the people closest to me marked me as 'lazy', 'stupid', a 'mess'. It hurt. I had low self esteem, breakdowns and anxiety.

One of the clearest visual displays of ADHD in a person is their inability to keep things organised, tidy or minimal. I have so many hobbies and have made far too many impulse purchases - there is just stuff everywhere. My film exaggerates this visual aspect of ADHD and makes the clutter and mess a character in itself.

Being messy isn't often, or ever, seen as a positive trait... and so it is natural to want to change that perceived flaw in oneself. Speaking as someone who has tried to change, it is a losing battle - our brain chemistry is simply not designed to be neat, well mine isn't anyway - I can only speak for myself.

Hot Mess aims to highlight the struggles and anxieties of someone who experiences these things and the numbness created by a toxic parent. There is an ongoing debate discussing what came first - the trauma or the ADHD?

Making this film was a challenge in itself and an opportunity for me to learn more about how to best harness my own voice, creativity and vision. I've always struggled to get stories out of my head and into a format that resonates on that deep level I want them to. This film is the first time I feel that I may have achieved it and it is honestly a miracle that a person with a brain like mine has finally got there. I hope it is received well, I've had encouraging comments so far and plan to use this newfound clarity of direction to make many more semi-autobiographical short films in the future.