The Carer

With moments of dark comedy and heart-breaking sadness, The Carer aims to give a raw insight into a daughter’s mental and physical breakdown under the demands of full-time care giving. Lisa is a woman in her forties who has never truly left home, stuck in an endless routine of cleaning and caring for her sick mother. Today is tougher than most; Lisa has missed the deadline on her final Masters assignment. Will she learn how to establish the necessary boundaries in her life before it’s too late?

Dark, absurd and funny at times, the themes of The Carer centre around loneliness, guilt and sacrifice. What excited me about this story was the opportunity to give a raw POV insight into a daughter’s mental and physical breakdown under the demands of full time care giving. In a climate where the darker sides of socioeconomic influences are starkly prevalent, I have always been fascinated by the transient nature of chance and the harsh realities of circumstance meeting opportunity, something painfully and fleetingly expressed in Lisa’s conflicted struggle in ‘The Carer’. My passion lies in giving a platform to less told stories, and finding new perspectives to communicate a complex and conflicted inner world.  With The Carer I hope to shed light on a less depicted and untraditional mother-daughter relationship. I aimed to direct this with a strong character driven visuals and shot to the rhythm of the story and the protagonist, and ultimately the goal is to create a launchpad for myself as a director and for the creatives starting out on their journey alongside me. The Carer was shot fusing minimalistic Scandinavian shooting styles and mood with the unflinching raw themes, naturalism and spirit of a British kitchen sink drama. Lisa's story roots itself in British social realism and naturalistic storytelling in the vein of filmmakers such as Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. This stark and in-your-face realism was fused with aspects of the rawness imposed by a Scandinavian dogma inspired handheld lens and the relentless attention to a character's extreme experiences of everyday struggles in the vein of Aronosky's (Mother, Requiem for a Dream) and Cianfrancisco's (Blue Valentine) shooting styles.