After becoming a mom for the first time, I was trying to understand the newfound rage I felt inside of me when entering society again. Once I started looking for answers to why and what I was feeling, I became aware of postpartum mommy rage/the mama bear effect. Through research, I found that this protective rage is an actual feeling that human mothers feel that is comparable to how an actual mother bear feels when protecting her cubs in the wild. This means that they will actually kill any being that comes close to their cubs. Which is how I, a new mother, felt about my new baby.
Our work entails giving a voice to new mother's during those vulnerable months (sometimes years) where emotions and stakes are running on a level that is almost indescribable - unless you're going through it or have been through it already. With our own very personal experience of postpartum we hope to give mother's the permission to feel a variety of emotions, including rage!
Also, we want our audience to walk away knowing that there isn't any shame in what they're feeling and how they express it. It's a wild ride to be on for the first time and we want our audience to feel a little less alone in their experience as a first time mom.
ARTISTIC APPROACH
Our work will be presented through a dark comedy short film.
The only way to make it through postpartum is by laughing, so naturally we wanted to use comedy to talk about postpartum mommy rage. Inspired by single camera female-driven stories such as Dead to Me, our film takes a dark comedic turn. We will allow the comedic writing to speak for itself but allow the changes in lighting and camera angles to feed the darker moments of our story.
The pace of the film goes back and forth in the same way a new mom feels during postpartum by picking up speed and slowing down throughout. It will feel uncomfortable at times, loud and over the top at others but ALWAYS rooted in truth.
