About this Short Film
Monster, from Australian filmmaker Hannah Rowlands, is a short film that explores themes of isolation and mental health through the lens of adulthood and individual experience. Quiet and thoughtful in tone, it offers a sensitive look at the emotional landscape people navigate when feeling cut off from others. We screen it as part of Focus on Ability because it speaks to the festival’s aim of highlighting varied abilities, experiences and strengths within disability communities. Monster invites viewers to sit with moments of vulnerability and resilience, and to consider how connection and understanding can make space for different ways of being.
Film Details
Film Transcript
When tears are ignored, the unworthy, the unlovable dragon spews out of my deepest depths of my being. I can scream and wail tantrums. It's so hard to hold the lid on. I try so hard, but it bursts wide open. In a split second, the wind can change. Everything comes back to haunt me. Kaboom, kaboom, kaboom. Bolts of lightning come at me. Echoes of memories torture me. I'm overwhelmed, feeling out of body. But I don't want to hurt you or scare you. I never ever want to paint others with my pain.
Sometimes I'm like a child. I'd rather play, sing and dance, be in comfort in my own magical world, kissing the animals and giggling the days away, exploring the garden and splashing in the mud, remembering the purity that's long forgotten in our adulthood. It's so beautiful here, and I wish I could stay. The world tells us to sit down and shut up and be a good little girl. If you express anything, you are instantly abnormal or crazy. But what exactly is normal? Tell me how that exists. How do I aim to reach this perfectionism? It's not attainable for anyone. Grounded, yes. Balance, yes. Mother-selves, yes. But there is no such thing as normal.
If I hold this in, if I do not feel, if I do not soothe this child within, the path leads to spiralling only of destruction and [Music] suffering.
Sometimes I'm like a child. I can be so frightened of strangers and the dark. I want to hide. I try so hard to hide in my body. But you can see me, can't you? You can see me trying to hide. But when you look in my eyes, what do you truly see?
Filmmaker
Hannah Rowlands is the filmmaker behind this entry. See every Focus on Ability entry from Hannah Rowlands.
