Student’s short film selected for two film festivals
A PhD student has described her joy after her film – set and filmed in ͷԭ – was selected for screening at two film festivals.
Daniella DeVinter’s short film Unwell Woman premiered at the the BAFTA- and BIFA-qualifying Cambridge Film Festival this week and will also be screened at the London Short Film Festival in January.
The independent film, which is 13 minutes long, was conceived by Daniella in 2021 and shot in ͷԭ’s Webb Library and the University Arms over six nights the following year.
It tells the story of a student who visits a library late at night and ends up being the last one there – with only a creepy portrait on the wall for company. She is reading Freud’s ‘Studies on Hysteria’ when events take a spooky turn.
Daniella describes the style as ‘gothic pyscho-drama’ and admits an obsession with '70s cinema (her PhD subject is German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder) and films such as Suspiria and Don’t Look Now had a major influence.
She said: “Unwell Woman both honours and heckles the films of that decade, and the way women’s suffering has been treated on and off-screen.”
“I had this image ghosting around in my head: a woman’s portrait with a secret or story to tell. I think I was subconsciously searching for something — an image, a character — that could represent the way women have been silenced throughout history with the catch-all diagnosis of 'hysteria'.”
“I wrote the script very quickly in a spurt of gut instinct, but it wasn’t fully-formed and, in truth, it kept changing and metamorphosising as I drafted and redrafted it. It’s ended up being more than just a horror movie. It’s a kind of parable about bodily autonomy and what happens when that gets taken away, when you’re not free to write your own story.”
Daniella explains the film reflects her own personal experience with undiagnosed autism, ADHD and Myalgic Encephalomyeltis (ME).
She said: “During the process of making the film, I was going through the motions of being misdiagnosed and dismissed by doctors as just another young woman with anxiety issues. I was in the dark as to what was going on and still wondering what the cause of all these symptoms were. Looking back now, I can see how that feeling has seeped into the film itself, that feeling of being in the dark about your own body.”
Daniella made her very first film for the College’s film club, , and said the society’s short film competitions had been “a domino that set off a whole chain of other creative projects”.
After winning the summer short film competition in 2021, she was invited to work for Eagle Eye Drama (Professor T producers) on an episode for the second series of Before We Die. More recently she has been working on a crime drama series starring a neurodivergent protagonist, Patience, due to air on Channel 4 shortly.
“Thinking back, I almost didn't enter Film at Jesus because I thought whatever I made would never be good enough (thank goodness I went against my initial instincts),” she said.
“So I'd encourage anyone to just grab a camera and give it a go. It doesn't have to be a big-budget or perfectly polished affair. You never know what might come of it.”
