Filmmaker Statement

My mom and I have had a profoundly fraught relationship since I can remember. Despite our lifelong history of unrepaired ruptures, for the last couple years, we’ve managed to stay on speaking terms (mostly). With time, the burning upset of my youth has cooled enough to discern what fueled it all along - an acutely painful hunger for intimate connection with her. I yearn for us to care for, know, and feel each other. During my pregnancy, I was kept up at night by the fear that my daughter and I would suffer from the same devastating disconnection. It was then that I became aware of a fantasy I'd been replaying in the recesses of my thoughts, wherein my mom and I get quiet, make eye contact, and gently place our hands on each others’ cheeks. In my imagination, this simple interaction would catalyze a spontaneous transcendence of our habitual ways of relating - like an immediate reset - transporting us into a stage of true and abiding closeness. After losing myself for stretches in this fantasy, I would tearfully “come to,” haunted by a mournful terror that, one day, in the wake of my mom’s death, I’d be wracked with regret for having missed my opportunity to share this with her. But, for reasons beyond the scope of this statement, the barriers to orchestrating a moment with her like this feel painfully insurmountable in real life. So instead, in what may represent our best chance of somehow beginning to bridge the chasm between us, I’ve made a film about it. DAUGHTERING is both a cathartic discussion of the universal journey toward finding intimacy between parent and adult child, and an exploration of the impact this journey can have on our personal sense of wholeness. My main interest - line to line, shot to shot, cut to cut, cue to cue - has been to create a viewing experience that is intensely visceral, so that our audience might willingly undergo a transformation along with the characters. To that end, while my focus as the actor was on giving a truthful performance, it’s been my focus as the director to amplify the film’s rhythms and dynamics, which specifically serve to quiet minds and open hearts. My ultimate wish is that DAUGHTERING rouses in its viewers a longing for the quality of relationship with their mothers (or fathers) that I long for with mine, so that they may connect intimately with their most-loved ones, before it’s too late. This film offers hope that real intimacy with our parents is possible. DAUGHTERING conveys that, if we summon the phenomenal courage required, connection is often literally within reach. And the ultimate payoff is a deeper intimacy with ourselves.