ReBirth

My favourite films are like nightmares, with a single emotional idea at their core. We are carried through the film by people, objects or associations in a seamless, dreamlike way so that we can never quite be sure how we got there.

Inspired by the novels of Kafka and Dostoyevsky, in ReBirth we explore a world similar to ours but not our own, where the usual social norms and rules do not apply and everything is slightly “off”. It is set out-of-time, borrowing wardrobe, props and cinematic language from multiple eras designed to leave the audience feeling a little off-balance and with a sense of the uncanny. Wide-angle lenses, high contrast ratios, off-balance compositions and a muted colour palette communicate the claustrophobia, paranoia and decay of the world.

At its heart the film looks at how we think about and define ourselves. Each character wraps their identity up in external ideas: Lily is defined by her appearance and how others perceive her, Smith by control and dominance, and Nameless Man by his scientific achievements and knowledge.

This externalisation of their identity leaves each of them in a state of loneliness and despair. By the film’s end, each character realises the hollow nature of their sense of self. Without any other ways of defining themselves they reach further into their external definitions of who they are since this is all they know how to do, but this can and does only exacerbate their crises, leading to anger (Smith), emptiness (Lily) and mania (Nameless).