Powder Room

This narrative holds a lot of personal gravity for me. I injected so much more material from my life into this concept than I ever have in my earlier works, and on a much more honest level. Ironically, for that reason I believe that, though expressed through a highly eccentric character, this has turned out to be one of the most universal stories I’ve been able to tell so far as a filmmaker. We’re living in an era where so many of our true identities and potentials as individuals are constantly clouded by the pressures of upholding an external image. At the root of it, this is a tale about the modern way of life: after losing various elements of structure in her life, the most significant being that of a “normal” family, Vera attempts to regain a sense of control over the doubts and complexes that she develops about motherhood, femininity, and her place in society by funneling all of her energy into promoting a public image online and essentially giving up on all other aspects of her existence. The audience is then invited to experience alongside her the dark and empty (though sometimes humorous) reality behind her fame. My hope is that viewers are ultimately able to empathize with this character as a caricature of each and every one of us; she may have just reached one million subscribers, but she spends her life hiding.