Mary Muromcew

Project

Volta

I grew up in Wyoming. It was beautiful and wild and safe, but as soon as I discovered that I was gay the town changed. It didn’t feel like home anymore. Life as I wanted it didn’t feel possible in my town, or others like it. What I knew were stories like Brokeback Mountain, Boys Don’t Cry, or the real life tragedy of Matthew Shepard. There’s an aching lack of stories that imagine the West as a place where queerness can thrive, and even more so, ones that show people coming into themselves in old age. In my creative process I have been, and continue to be, guided by Lauren Berlant's writing on freedom: We bear each other hoping to breathe in each other's freedom.

This short film is the culminating work of my time at NYU's film program. It follows an older closeted woman as she reckons with the ghosts of her past, and the ghosts of what could have been. It is set in rural America and explores how the relationship between space and body is central to imagining freedom. As I was making this film, I was anchored by a desire to better understand forgiveness, especially when thinking about hatred, which led me to ask: what do we owe each other if we want to live in a world that is just and kind?