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AN INITIATION SHOT OVER 5 YEARS
She imagines it, writes it and films it in Israel without any film crew or production.
She tirelessly dedicates almost 6 years of her life to make this project real: The private journal of a young woman who samples her youth into images from her 20 to 25.
The filmmaker risks her security for this film by venturing into a conflictual geopolitical zone and by literally braving the frontiers. For Trance Therapy, she’s also risked her mental balance by cutting herself off from the world for years in the middle of the lost mountains of the Golan Heights. It is also important to highlight the difficulty of filming one’s life at all costs on such a long time - to take automatically out the camera and film one’s private life in the best moments and the worst.
FROM INDIVIDUAL TRAUMA TO GENERATIONAL TRAUMA
in Tel Aviv, when I decided to recast my life and not return to France. I traveled through Israel
freely and explored the north of the country.
Close to the no man's land of Golan, an enigmatic area along Israel's borders with Lebanon and Syria, I met uninhibited young Israelis for whom the wild north is a refuge. These young people come here to continue
the therapy they began in India, following their three-year military service, hoping to heal from
the trauma of war. Without knowing it, we were all suffering from unconscious yet very present wounds. We were driven by the same desire : to heal. I lived there for almost 3 years. „
" FOR 4 YEARS, I FILMED MY LIFE UNCONDITIONALLY. „
" From the lonely to the euphoric experiences of youth, from first love to heartbreaking breakup, the film juxtaposes the chaos and hope with which we all juggle in our lives. Rather than catalogue a selection of the beautiful and positive moments of my youth, the film also captures its darkest moments. This is another challenge of Trance Therapy: to reveal what we usually hide; to bring into existence what is eclipsed; to voice what is taboo or disturbing.
My story relates an experience I would have liked an elder to pass on to me a year before the film begins. A story which might have saved me from personal trauma. In 2016, I was raped by my supervisor while working for him as a journalist. A 60-year-old man took advantage of my vulnerability when I was only 20 years old. By making this intimate story accessible to all, I hope to warn and educate audiences about mental and sexual manipulation and its devastating consequences. „
DISSOCIATION AND POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It was a particularly heartbreaking and difficult ordeal
to overcome aged 23. In the film, my mask represents the dissociation. It looks like my face but retains a plastic, distorted appearance.
It is an irrational sensation of living outside of one's own body. Sufferers do not recognize
their reflections in the mirror, they do not know who they are, they become a strangers to themselves. Mental dissociation is almost unknown to the general public as it is rarely discussed by the media. While studies report that 10% of the general population could experience dissociative disorders
like unreality, depersonalization, acute panic. „
A NEW EXPERIENCE IN FILM : CINE-REALITY
Trance Therapy is a spontaneous hybrid film that adopts an extraordinary language by being filmed live in reality, but retold like a fictional film. Despite the totally improvised creation of Trance Therapy, a structured story worthy of interest emerged. The film is neither documentary nor fiction.
It is a film which is convinced that life is the most virtuosic author. „
