SYNOPSIS
‘Cycle’ is the story of a wronged young tribal woman who, in the absence of systemic justice, turns rebel, but struggles to be able to fulfil all the expectations that the path to retribution demands.
‘Cycle’ is a multilingual short film shot on a phone camera as found footage, and filmed in three uninterrupted long takes. The film features a large and ethnically varied cast, most of who were facing a camera for the first time ever.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
‘Cycle’ is not about bad guys and their victims.
That binary of good and evil is merely the symptom. Not the root cause of the problem.
This film seeks instead to explore the chain of Power which perpetuates the cycle of Violence.
‘Cycle’ is not about the wronged tribal or the abused woman or the oppression of the marginalized – all of which this film appears to be.
These are mere access points to hopefully help us turn our lens onto a species that continues to fail its own.
On its surface this film appears to be a genre film, of rape and vengeance. But what we seek to do along the way is to suddenly thrust upon a bloodthirsty audience – the idea of anti-vengeance. And to deny the viewer any brutal satisfaction they expect and seek from a narrative of this kind.
Hopefully this film will question our frightening mob mentality in matters of retribution, and start a conversation around the gaping chasm between collective and individual moralities, to see individuals who are compelled to pick up a gun as a complex product of circumstances, inequalities, fragilities and desperations.