AFFLICTION
Cast: Nabil Vinas, Briana Swann
Crew: Producers: Christina Raia, Kelsey Rauber – Screenwriters: Kelsey Rauber – Cinematographer: Peter Westervelt – Editor: Matt Gershowtiz – SFX Makeup: Mike Dimitroulakos – Sound Design: Frank Huang – VFX: Paul Robinson – Art Direction: Shivanna Sooknanan
Email: christina@congestedcat.com
Web: www.congestedcat.com/affliction
Synopsis
Two coworkers contemplate the aftermath of an encounter.
Director
Christina Raia is a New York City based Writer/Director and the Founder of CongestedCat Productions. She focuses on character-driven narrative projects that explore social issues through horror and humor. Her work, consisting of over a dozen short films, a web series, and two feature films, has screened at film festivals around the world and gained a large online following through multiple crowdfunding campaigns and coverage on press outlets such as Indiewire and BuzzFeed. Through a desire to support other filmmakers, she works for Seed&Spark as the Head of Education, teaching and empowering creators to build their audience and crowdfund their work. She also runs IndieWorks, a monthly screening and community-building series showcasing short films by other New York filmmakers. At the 2019 Queens World Film Festival, she won the Lois Weber Pioneer Award for her leadership in film.
Filmmaker’s Note
The short was originally born out of a weekly writing group between screenwriter Kelsey Rauber, frequent collaborator Ryan Kramer, and myself. We try to meet up every week to either give feedback to each other on new pages of ongoing projects or practice pitches that are either inspired by our own experiences or come out of challenges we give each other in session (like from news stories or a draw of the hat type of exercise featuring genres and settings). This particular piece was a script Kelsey presented that was inspired by frustrations surrounding the lack of self-reflection and tangible progress in 2019 despite consent finally being a topic of discussion in the zeitgeist, as well as a general fascination with menstruation and evolution. I really liked the way it played with a both timely and timeless issue and did so via a high concept conveyed through a small contained encounter. We ended up workshopping it over a few meetups and, eventually, Kelsey and I decided to collaborate on it together with me as director. I’m really eager to discuss the final product with an audience.
