Iris and Asriel

A few years ago, my grandmother died of dementia. As it was during the COVID pandemic, we weren’t allowed to visit her. One day she stopped answering texts, and that was the end of it. I never fully processed it; until a writing prompt reading “Imagine a story where one lover forgets the other at the end of the story. What would the last line be?” made me come up with the last few lines of dialogue in the film, and I started writing. It was initially a much darker and surreal story, but as I finally went through my thoughts and feelings while writing, it became much more of a hopeful story. Some surrealist elements remain, especially surrounding the polaroids and Asriel’s monologue, but the mixture of very naturalistic filmmaking with some sparse surrealist elements is very reminiscent of the Life is Strange series, my main stylistic inspiration. Not only did working with an absolutely wonderful and talented cast and crew elevate the film beyond any of my expectations going in, but making this film helped me come to terms with my experiences surrounding dementia, and I hope that it will help and speak to others who have been impacted by it as well. Dementia is the single most evil, horrible thing that can happen to a person, and as cases of early onset dementia remind us, it isn’t a blight reserved for our parents and grandparents, but to any of us at any moment. Everything that can be done to facilitate dementia research should be done, and who knows who might see this film. Maybe, in one of our audiences there shall be someone who grows to be instrumental in defeating the illness. So as we hope to help people heal from past experiences, we also hope to help raise awareness, contributing to the fight that might one day finally make dementia something of the past.