Director’s Statement

"Shells" is a cinematic inquiry into the fragile boundary that delineates our internal anxieties from the personas we project into the world. This film is born from a philosophical exploration of the universal unrest that ties humanity together across disparate lives—the grocer, the fry cook, the boatsman—each of us wrestling with our own version of existential dread.

Structured in four acts, the film eschews traditional narrative scripts in favor of emotional landscapes that the actors navigate, embodying a spectrum of psychological states designed to resonate across diverse audience experiences. Each act delves deeper into philosophical discourses, utilizing the gradual unveiling of characters’ layers—both metaphorical and literal—as they shed their clothing and break through both physical and emotional shells in an effort to connect more deeply.

Being primarily a dance filmmaker, a subject I teach at CalArts, I do not work up from the script up. The foundation of the films I make are emotional territories, from which movement emanates and reflects. I took this same approach to “Shells,” where the work with the actors wasn’t in what words they would say and how, but rather what complex emotional place they were in and what topics they were discussing. Like with dancers, how they get from point a to point b is their art, not mine - though I am a practiced admirer of it.

The intended result of a process like this is to shrink the space between the actor and the narrative, creating deeper authenticity in the performance.

In "Shells," the script evolved organically, emerging from genuine discussions among the cast that continued to develop right up to the day of shooting. The authenticity of the film is heightened by the fact that the two couples portrayed are actual couples in real life and friends off-screen as well. As the director, my role was more about setting the stage for the larger themes and emotional landscapes they would explore. This approach is very much in line with my background in dance filmmaking, where the choreography marks the key points in space and time, while the magic happens in the improvised movements that connect these moments.

The film’s progression from superficial interactions to profound philosophical dialogues touches on the theoretical (Hedonism vs Eudaimonism, existentialism and Heidegger’s concept of 'thrown-ness.’ Despite the heavy dialogue-driven meat of the story, the final act goes without the language of words, capitalizing on non-verbal communication to support the film’s push toward a deeper communal connection.