This film is such a pure expression of my 22 YO self living outside of the US for the first time. I was free, I had no expectations. I also had no experience with film other than knowing that I loved them. More than that, they were my lifeline growing up in a place I never quite felt at home.

My first film was created as a no-dialogue exercise at FAMU, the Film and TV Academy in Prague, where I was studying for a semester. I wrote a poem perched on the bank of the Vltava that was our script. It was 1992, three years out from the Velvet Revolution. Freedom was still a fresh current in the air, and I was a young woman trying to figure out who I wanted to be in the world.

The dark figure at the beginning of the film represents the psyche, the part of ourselves we keep hidden in the shadows, out of view of others. But she doesn’t understand that yet. All she knows is her discontent. She wants her older lover to help. But they are out of sync. The younger man in the subway dressed like the figure in her dream, might hold the answer. But he doesn’t. The figure returns in her dream and helps her see that only she holds the key to her happiness. And it comes when you embrace all parts of yourself, not just the one you show the world.

As the Polish filmmaker, Krzysztof Kieślowski, whose films had a huge impact on me said,

Freedom lies within.

I believe that profoundly.