Mine

Filmmaker's note

Sexual assault turns so many of our lives into horror movies we didn’t agree to star in. Places we once felt were safe become haunted houses. Hell, parts of ourselves become haunted houses. Throw in the fact that I exist in our current world as a trans woman and you’ve got a recipe for drinking (been there), drugs (an essential stop on any self-destructive journey), and isolation (the internet is NOT your friend). So where do you go from there?

For me, the place I went was to a question that I found kept me up at night:

How do I write myself as the subject of a story when life cast me as the object?

It’s that question that led to the creation of 'Mine.'

The film opens like a horror story we think we recognize: a woman alone, a house too big, a masked intruder, a knife. But that familiarity deceives. What unfolds initially as violence and terror, reveals itself to be something else. Something stranger. More intimate. More difficult to name.

As a trans woman and a survivor, I wanted to tell a story about reclaiming authorship of one’s traumatic past, and realizing how messy a process that can be. How eroticism and fear can live side by side. How there’s magic in trusting someone enough to let them see your broken parts but how that magic can carry real risk, especially if you trust the wrong person.

What emerges is a story about control and perception. About the lengths we’ll go to feel safe. About how safety can look like fear, and fear like safety… It just depends on the angle.

And speaking of that angle… One of the most exciting parts of making this film has been witnessing how audiences receive it—particularly its ending. In early friends and family screenings, a consistent divide has declared itself, often along gender lines. As the credits rolled, men would ask: “Why is she so scared?”

No woman has asked that.

The conversations that divide has sparked have been illuminating, uncomfortable, and thrilling. They’ve made me hopeful. Not just about this film, but about art’s ability to hold discomfort, start dialogue, and maybe even help us understand each other a little better.