Ellie Tripp
2025 HEAR US Awardee
Undergraduate Film & TV Class of 2027
Ellie Tripp is a writer, photographer and filmmaker. They were born in China, raised in Toronto and currently pursuing a BFA in Film & TV at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Ellie spent two years as a programmer on TIFF’s Next Wave committee. They seek to explore narratives that centralize universal themes through diverse voices, focusing on a humanistic voice while rejecting oppression solely as identity.
Project
Rapid Eye Movement
[Content Warning: Physical Violence]
Rapid Eye Movement is a deeply personal and introspective project that I have been developing for over three years. Inspired by my own experiences with relationship violence in my first romantic relationship as a teenager, this film serves as a means of processing trauma and exploring the complexities of abuse within queer relationships, a subject that remains significantly underrepresented.
Rapid Eye Movement is a short narrative film that follows 16-year-old Morgan on the pivotal night that marks the beginning of an abusive relationship. However, rather than unfolding in real-time, the story takes place within Morgan’s consciousness years later, as she compulsively relives that defining night. It is the night she and her partner first become intimate, an experience inextricably linked to another first: the moment her partner is physically violent. Through Morgans memory, we witness the emotional entanglement that will seemingly persist beyond this specific night, manifesting even within the altered reality of Morgan’s own mind.
