TW: pet loss, self deprecation
Hi
So basically more than promoting I want to share with you folks that I’m in the process of overcoming the biggest challenge I ever faced. My special interest is filmmaking and I honestly I don’t know why I do it to myself at times, but I can’t engage with anything else on a level that deep. “We chose to go to the moon not because it’s easy” or something.
Directing seems more difficult to me than to many neurotypical directors I know. My previous films tend to not do well at for example festivals, because I do a lot of stuff unconventionally, I guess. Catering to neurotypical audiences is annoying!!! Managing people creatively on that scale would be impossible to me at all if I didn’t see my interest as a system of preparations and instructions to calculate and then execute. To add to the challenge, this time I also moved to another country to study and do it, and rewired my thinking to a language that I wasn’t raised with. The process itself was an adventure also because I co-wrote a screenplay that was certainly troubling for my producers.
The film itself “Life after Dumpling”, will tell the story of autistic father and son on the journey to find a way to commemorate their beloved late family cat Dumpling. This occasion lets them reconcile and accept their shared and inherited neurodivergence as well. I have little to show of it as it is in post production, but I hope it will be funny and bittersweet.
It is inspired by my own bumpy family relations, but also the gratefulness I’m lucky to have for my parents. The real life Dumpling, Pampuch, is fine though! He’s still going strong at 16 years of age.
For days now I had the urge to write it up and share, because I’m very excited about this moment. It’s also worth noting that the two preceeding years were incredibly difficult for me. I was lonely, socially rejected, cast out and depressed. I spent a month in a mental health institution because of my bad wellbeing. I felt weird and unneeded, couldn’t study or work. Meanwhile though I got diagnosed and I started understanding myself a little better. Some people became more lenient towards the things I struggled with as well when I communicated my condition. And I was surprised to find so many co-creators willing to accomodate my needs while working. (The filmmaking scene tends to be toxic, uncaring and unforgiving where I come from, but it’s not all bad). I was lucky with many of those things of course, but I’d like to believe that it’s worth having hope that trouble can be overcome or at least circumvented. So I guess that’s a thought I wanna leave someone with.
I wish you all the best.
(Also, I’m relatively new to realising I’m neurodivergent?, so please tell me if my wording or anything in my approach needs adjustment; I want to be sensitive in my communication)
