Background
An experimental narrative that highlights the impact drug abuse and mental illness has on young people of color and how it impacts their communities.
The research that was done for the creation of this film explored the different realms of surrealism whether it was through literature, paintings or films. I also did thorough research on the impacts of drug abuse and mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, through scholarly articles, podcast, books and interviewing those who experience and are affected by the impacts of drug abuse and/or mental illness personally and impersonally.
Synopsis
The main character, Mateo, is a young queer Afro-Dominican man who struggles with drug abuse and mental illness. Mateo self medicates as a way to escape from their Schizophrenia.The negligence from those he loves causes him to spiral down into a negative state of being which leads to an inordinate psychosis where he encounters an alternate self. The surreal and the sentimental meet to express the extreme and heavy through an abstract lens. Staying true to the roots of surrealism- liberating thought, language, and human experience from the oppressive boundaries of rationalism, I chose to break out of conventional patterns of thought into something beyond ordinary life and reality.