Experiencing Interruptions?

Lottie

On a family vacation fifteen-year-old Lottie, restless and unraveling, fixates on an older pizza delivery boy who makes her feel seen. As her parents quietly try to protect her from unraveling, they only drive her deeper into it.

  • Bella Rieth
    Director
    Poor Creature, Variations, Fish King, Last meal, Ebba
  • Bella Rieth
    Writer
    Poor Creature, Variations, Fish King, Last meal, Ebba
  • Bella Rieth
    Producer
    Poor Creature, Variations, Shuga Mangos, Fish King, Last meal, Ebba , Checkmate, Lunar Trim, Nighttime in Spring
  • Derek Cestone
    Producer
    Poor Creature, Variations, Fish King, Last meal, Ebba
  • Nathan Pandazopoulos
    Producer
    Poor Creature, Variations, Fish King, Last meal, Ebba
  • Megan Oysen
    Key Cast
    "Lottie "
  • Anna Sheridan
    Key Cast
    "The Woman"
    The Bikeriders,, Monica, Bones and All
  • Emily Berry
    Key Cast
    "Jenne"
  • Henry Sirota
    Key Cast
    "Johnathan"
    Marty Supreme, The Gilded Age ,AMP’s ‘Tone Got Talent’ , Year of the Goat$ , Beijing Rodeo, Lottie
  • Timothy Connelly
    Key Cast
    "John"
    Lonely Nights in Chinatown
  • Vincent Longo
    Director Of Photography
    Lunar Trim, Lets Be Pirates, Shuga Mangos
  • Joseph Nehring
    Sound and Composition
    Poor Creature, Fish King, Variations
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Psychological Drama
  • Runtime:
    22 minutes 20 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 10, 2025
  • Production Budget:
    20,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States, United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States, United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Arri Digital, Super 8,
  • Aspect Ratio:
    5:6
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Bella Rieth

Bella Rieth is a director and producer drawn to films that explore the fragile boundaries of identity, memory, and psychological unraveling. Her work blends stark realism with dreamlike unease, often centering on characters at the brink of transformation. Her latest film, LOTTIE, is a psychological drama set in 1973 New England about a 15-year-old girl battling the specter of her own mind. She is currently developing her first feature, SOUTH OF THE BORDER. Bella has written, directed, and produced fifteen short films, most notably POOR CREATURE, which premiered at the TCL Chinese Theatres during the Golden State Film Festival and streamed on the Roku Daily Shorts Channel. Her work delves into themes of loss, isolation, and self-discovery, often with a haunting visual and narrative style. Bella is the CEO of Kunsthouse Productions, founded in 2021.

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Director Statement

I’ve always found The Yellow Wallpaper to be a profoundly haunting and unsettling story—its portrayal of isolation, repression, and psychological unraveling has lingered with me for years. I wanted to reinterpret that experience through the eyes of a 15-year-old girl, someone too young to be fully understood but old enough to feel trapped in the same cycle of fear, isolation, and detachment.

At its core, Lottie questions the powerlessness of fear—how, in trying to protect someone from losing themselves, we might unintentionally push them further into madness. Her parents struggle to help her, caught between love and uncertainty, while Lottie, feeling increasingly alienated, constructs her own reality. Like Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s protagonist, she spirals inward, her world shifting between what is real and what is imagined.

The film is both nostalgic and unsettling, using voyeuristic wides to create a sense of distance—as if we are intruding on something intimate yet unreachable. These are intercut with handheld Super 8 footage—a pure, subjective point of view from Lottie, paired with post-mortem voiceover, pulling us into her unraveling.

I was also drawn to the fragmented nature of memory and how our recollections often feel disjointed, especially in moments of trauma. Through subtle performances and immersive sound design, I wanted to ground Lottie’s world in realism before gradually pulling it away, blurring the line between her internal and external landscapes.

Ultimately, Lottie is an exploration of how we remember those who spiral. Do we see her as a broken girl lost to tragedy, or as someone desperately trying to make sense of her world through fleeting images and fractured recollections? The film doesn’t provide easy answers—only the sensation of witnessing something slip away.

—Bella Rieth