Filmmaker Statement

TRICHOTILLOMANIA! is the debut film by Kelly Schiesswohl. It tells the pretty-much-true story of how Kelly discovered that she had the hair pulling disorder called: Trichotillomania. The film celebrates the process of finding yourself online and the many pitfalls and perils of online self-diagnosis. This film was made entirely from Kelly's childhood bedroom on a 2013 iMac that she got from her college's junk heap shortly before the campus was shut down due to the pandemic. Because of this, the story also explores isolation and the increasingly symbiotic relationships we all developed with the internet when trapped indoors for weeks on end. The film is a concentrated syrup of Kelly's distinctly cheeky directorial voice, dark humor, and bonkers visuals to portray the hairy, lumpy, pimply, and perfectly imperfect facets of reality. TRICHOTILLOMANIA is “Like a hotdog. It takes the most slimy, overlooked, underbelly of life and turns it into something tasty... and erotically shaped."