Filmmaker’s Statement

DISSONANCE began with a tiny fragment: a moment of honest conversation with the voice inside my own head, and the courage to ask a simple question – what do you want?

The answer surprised me. It opened the door into a story about the complex, ever-evolving relationship we have with the past versions of ourselves: the parts we abandon, hide away, judge, blame, dismiss, or simply forget. The scared child. The misunderstood teenager. The insecure young adult. The selves that take root in our subconscious and whisper their unmet needs through the voice of the inner critic, shaping what we say to ourselves and, inevitably, what we then believe to be true.

I have long been fascinated by the relationship between creativity and suffering. We all have some level of colloquial familiarity with the trope of the “tortured artist” or the “mad genius”, but I wanted to explore that archetype from a more intimate and human perspective. What happens when ambition becomes a way of outrunning yourself? What happens when the thing that once gave your life meaning becomes so intertwined with failure and perfectionism that you forget why you loved it in the first place? What happens when you are finally forced to sit alone with the voice inside your head?

From the beginning, it was important to me that DISSONANCE did not shy away from the darker parts of this story. There are moments in this film that are confronting, and there are emotional experiences depicted that I have rarely seen represented on screen in quite this way. But while the film acknowledges darkness, it is not a film about despair. At its heart, DISSONANCE is about hope. It is about creative expression as a lifeline in navigating the experience of being human.

DISSONANCE evolved through a deeply personal process of psychological excavation. I built this story from the inside out. For the best part of a year, I kept notes on the things the voice inside my own head was saying – often cruel, occasionally funny, invariably confronting, and sometimes painfully honest. From those fragments, the first draft of DISSONANCE emerged.

When director Danielo Barcelli signed on to the project, he brought not only his remarkable technical skill, but his vision, creative sensitivity, and his own personal insight to the world of DISSONANCE. During production, Laura Mackie joined our core creative team, bringing an invaluable combination of practical skill, emotional intelligence and a deep understanding of psychological nuance. Together, we made a film that feels raw, intimate and unflinching, but also deeply tender.

Although the specifics of DISSONANCE are incredibly personal, I believe the emotional truth at its centre is universal. We all have parts of ourselves that we keep hidden. Parts we are ashamed of. Parts we fear are too much, too broken, too strange, too needy, too difficult to love. In making this film, I wanted to shine a light into those places – and the only way I could authentically do that was to face them in myself.

My guiding principle throughout the making of DISSONANCE was to ask, is it honest? before asking, is it good? That question shaped every creative decision we made.

Intense, intimate and emotionally raw, DISSONANCE is a film for anyone who has ever felt too much for the world – anyone searching for meaning, catharsis, and a way home to themselves.

Rose Lonergan
Director, Executive Producer, Writer, Actor, Composer