Over Medicated

A young woman battles with the consequences of her psychiatrist prescribing her excess medication.

  • Rose Movizzo
    Director
  • Rose Movizzo
    Writer
  • Olivia Gaizutis
    Key Cast
  • Rose Movizzo
    Producer
  • Community College of Aurora
    School
  • Rose Movizzo
    Editor
  • Project Type:
    Short, Student
  • Runtime:
    5 minutes 3 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    August 15, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    0 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Community College of Aurora
  • International Independent Film Awards
    Bronze Winner
Director Biography - Rose Movizzo

Rose Movizzo is a twenty-one-year-old filmmaker from Franktown, Colorado. She works as a production assistant on various sets in the Denver area and is currently a student at Aurora Community College. In school, she is specializing in post-production and is set to graduate in 2026.

Rose’s interest in filmmaking was piqued in middle school during which she spent a part of each summer in film camps offered by a local high school. She continued to make short films through high school before deciding that she wanted to pursue it as a career. After finishing her AAS in post-production, she hopes to find work as an editor and use that knowledge to help build her storytelling skills to eventually become a director. Her dream is to one day be able to direct her own feature film.

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Director Statement

When I was in theatre, there was a joke that if I had a warning label it would say “heavily medicated for everyone’s safety”; I’ve jested for a while that I have to have my “serotonin skittles” or I’ll come unglued; I need to take my “happy pills” lest I be turned over to the “grippy sock authorities”. I remember one autumn day, sitting in my car, ruminating about all of these silly little jokes. For some reason that day, they suddenly weren’t so funny. Instead, they were poking relentlessly at a tender spot in my heart.

Could it be that I had run out of one of my meds for a couple of days and gone completely berserk? Or perhaps it was that my best friend had just donned her grippy socks and been admitted to the psychiatric ward? I may never know for certain what the reason was that caused my brain to stir about these seemingly trivial jokes, but it made me realize that these jokes were a flimsy band-aid covering a very sore spot in my psyche.

To run off of medication is a difficult thing to contend with, and the more I looked around, the more people I realized it affected. So many people I knew had their personalities medicated to death in hopes of treating psychiatric disorders. And it hurt. To look in the mirror and not recognize who you see is a fearsome thing. To have to choose between a hurt so deep that you cannot bear it or to feel nothing at all is a choice no one should have to make. And it is all the result of a broken, complicated system that is meant to help people. But often, I’m not sure it does. And no one was talking about it, so I decided that I would.