MONSTER

The project of this short film was born out of my experiences with bullying in middle school. At 12, when I came up with the idea for the short film “Monster,” I had almost reached a point of no return: I couldn't stand the idea of going to school, I hated almost all of my classmates and the blinded-or pretending not to see-teachers. Every day was like a torture from hell: they humiliated me by throwing everything at me, they kicked my desk and chair, every time I tried to intervene or say something there was someone to make a nasty, vicious comment about me. It had all started with a fight with my best friend, and by that I mean one of the people I loved the most in the whole universe. We were always talking about our future together both in high school and in college (we had very similar passions for writing and journalism).Only now that I am 15 I realize how toxic our friendship was and the manipulation, ghosting, and gaslighting I endured.
I got to eighth grade that at every nastiness or “innocent joke” I would burst into tears and the only way to combat that feeling was, quite simply, to stop crying. I froze emotionally; I had become apathetic and bored with everything and everyone constantly. After various paths with the therapist and discoveries about myself, middle school ended and finally, now, I was able to return to normal. High school for me was salvation, but one piece was still missing: I needed to close that chapter of my life for good. So, at the age of 14, I finished the screenplay for “Monster,” my first short film.
The short film aims to address the issues of adolescence and the discomfort that we young people constantly feel (especially in situations of social isolation, as mine was), but which we do not have the courage to express or face. Talking to parents, or teachers, is not easy; in fact, adults have forgotten what it means to be a teenager. We feel shame and humiliation , we feel helpless in the face of injustice, we wish not to be seen as victims, and we pretend that everything is fine.
With “Monster,” I want to tell the story of a teenage girl, Francis, and remove the bandages that some adults wear, not out of malice, but because they simply remember youth with fondness, rather than bitterness. We teens don't tell parents and adults everything, quite the contrary! Rather, we tend to tell many lies, just to protect ourselves from judgment or out of fear! That is why it is impossible to always know what is going on in our heads, but it is important to try to understand, in order to help these two worlds, that of adults and that of teens, come closer together and thereby improve each other.

I wish to send a message of hope to all those who thought, even once, that their lives were not enough to be lived, as, mistakenly, I also thought.