Rose Lonergan in Dissonance

Interview by Marcela Araneda

Dissonance feels less like a traditional short film and more like an emotional excavation. The themes of identity, self-worth, and returning to the version of yourself you abandoned in pursuit of success feel incredibly personal. At what point did you realise this story was something you needed to tell, not just wanted to tell?

Dissonance absolutely began as a very personal exploration of my own internal landscape. Initially, I was writing it for myself, as a way to metabolise and make sense of my experiences. I think the turning point for me was when I started sharing pieces of it with the people around me. This was when I realised that the story had value beyond myself – people could see themselves and their own experiences in it. We all have parts of ourselves that we judge, or ignore or feel ashamed of, and we all long to understand, accept and forgive ourselves. Throughout the process of making this film it became really clear that by shining a light into my own dark and ugly places, I allowed other people the opportunity to do the same. And I think that’s a story worth telling. 

There’s such a raw honesty in the way the film speaks to burnout, loneliness, and that feeling of being “too much” for the world. Was there a moment during writing or filming where the line between Rose the artist and Rose the person became blurred?

Honestly? I think the line between Rose the artist and Rose the person was blurred from the beginning, because the film came from such an intimate place. There were certainly moments in both the writing and filming where I felt really exposed, particularly because I wasn’t just performing or explaining an emotional state – I was engaging in real time with parts of myself that were incredibly raw and vulnerable and confronting. But I also think that’s where the work becomes powerful. If you’re able to take that kind of honesty and place it inside the container of script structure and camera language and character arc, that’s when cinema becomes really compelling for me. My goal with Dissonance was to take something incredibly personal and communicate the truth of it in a way that is crafted, intentional, and hopefully resonant for other people.

You’re carrying so much creatively on this project, writer, performer, and playing both on-screen characters. How did you emotionally and physically navigate switching between those two versions of self, especially within such an intimate psychological space?

Wearing so many creative hats on this project was definitely one of its biggest challenges. The most important thing for me was preparation. In the lead-up to the shoot, I wrote a very extensive production bible that detailed every aspect of how the film should look and feel – from hair and makeup to camera language, lighting, set design, score, wardrobe, and performance. That meant that once I was on set, I was able to put a lot of that aside and focus purely on the acting. The other major factor was having incredibly skilled collaborators who I trusted completely to take the reins of the project as a whole, while I focused on performance.

Playing two roles simultaneously was another major challenge in and of itself. From a practical perspective, I was doing full hair, makeup and wardrobe resets between characters, sometimes ten or twelve times in a single shoot day. Between that, the small team, and the limited daylight hours we were working with, achieving the twin effect was a huge logistical and technical challenge. Then from a performance perspective, I needed each character to feel distinct, complex and nuanced in her own right. Again, that came down to preparation: creating subtle differences in posture, rhythm, breathing and eyeline that helped separate the two characters without making either feel exaggerated. I also learned pretty quickly to use the reset time between characters to move between the two emotional states. The biggest challenge was not having another actor to work off. So much of good acting training teaches you how to listen and respond to another person, and because I didn’t have that in the traditional sense, the performance required a lot of self-generation. I had to create the emotional charge of the relationship from both sides, and make the connection between the two characters feel real, all while essentially acting to a blank space.

The film centres around a young woman confronting the part of herself she abandoned in pursuit of ambition. That’s something so many creatives quietly relate to. Do you think Dissonance is ultimately about grief, healing, or reconciliation with yourself?

I think it’s all three, but if I had to choose one, I’d say Dissonance is ultimately about reconciliation. Grief is definitely where the film begins – grief for the version of yourself you abandoned, grief for the life you thought you were going to have, grief for the parts of you that had to go quiet in order to survive or succeed. But I don’t think healing, at least in this film, looks like suddenly becoming whole or fixed. It’s much messier than that. For me, the film is about having the courage to face the parts of yourself you’ve rejected and begin to understand why they exist. It’s about realising that the voice you thought was trying to destroy you may have actually been trying, in its own frightened and distorted way, to protect you. So yes, there is grief in it, and hopefully healing too, but I think the heart of Dissonance is self-reconciliation.

Visually and sonically, the film feels haunting and deeply atmospheric. What was the collaborative process like with Danielo and Gypsy in shaping that emotional world? Having worked together before on Gotham Noir, did there already exist a kind of creative shorthand between the three of you?

Absolutely. Having worked together before, there was already a real sense of creative trust between the three of us, which was invaluable on a project as intimate and psychologically intense as Dissonance. I came into the process with a very clear emotional blueprint for the film, but Dani and Gyps brought that vision to life in ways that elevated it far beyond what I could have imagined or achieved alone. Danielo has an incredible ability to translate emotional subtext into visual language, and Gypsy brings a beautiful sensitivity, precision and emotional truth to her directing style. Because we already had that shorthand, the collaboration felt very intuitive. We could talk less in technical absolutes and more in emotional terms: what a scene needed to feel like, where the camera needed to sit in relation to the character’s inner world, what the sound design needed to achieve in terms of a visceral body response. The film’s atmosphere really came from that shared commitment to making the external world of the film mirror our character’s internal psychological experience. 

Indie arthouse filmmaking often asks people to create from pure instinct and passion rather than resources. What did this project teach you, not only as a filmmaker, but as a person?

I think first and foremost, this project taught me that limitation can be incredibly clarifying. When you don’t have endless resources, you’re forced to be very honest about what actually matters: the story, the emotional impact, the truth of the thing. As a filmmaker, Dissonance taught me to trust my instincts and to understand that a strong creative vision is often less about controlling every detail and more about knowing the emotional centre of the work well enough that every decision can orbit around it. 

As a person, it taught me so much about courage and vulnerability. I came out of this shoot with a kind of inner strength and self-knowledge that I’ve never experienced, and this has allowed me to show up with newfound courage and clarity in a lot of other areas of my life. It’s been a period of profound growth and change for me, on every level, and I’m very much still in that process. Making this film required me to face parts of myself I would have much rather avoided, and I had to do that in real time in front of a camera and other people. That was terrifying, but also profoundly healing. I came out of the process with a much stronger sense of myself, not because the film gave me all the answers, but because I realised that there is so much power in being willing to ask the questions. 

The film’s message speaks directly to people pleasers, over-thinkers, burnt-out creatives, and anyone who has felt unseen or unlovable. What do you hope someone sitting alone watching Dissonance takes away from it emotionally?

More than anything, I hope they feel less alone. I hope someone watching Dissonance feels, even for a moment, that the parts of themselves they have been taught to hide or judge are not as shameful or unlovable as they might believe. The film doesn’t offer an easy answer, because I don’t think there is one. But I do hope it offers a sense of recognition, and maybe a small opening towards self-compassion. If someone watches it and feels able to turn towards themselves with a little more gentleness, to face their dark corners with a little more courage and curiosity, or simply feels seen in the struggles that they don’t usually let anyone else see, that would truly mean the world to me.