Watch Previous Festival Films!

Firstly, tell us about the film and what inspired you to make it?

Off Fleek is about a teenage girl suffering from cyber bullying that begins to transform her appearance. She takes drastic action by attempting to reverse the transformation manually, which has disastrous consequences for herself and her family. Before making Off Fleek the majority of my short films have been comedies and I wanted to make a horror that did not rely on jump scares with a strong subject matter. The suffering caused by cyber bullying amongst teenagers was the perfect topic for a horror short. My key inspirations for the film are ‘The Fly” (1986) and ‘Black Mirror’. This mixture of a more traditional body transformation horror and the recent popularity of tech-based horror was something that interested me and would work well together.

Do you feel that people need to be made more aware of the trauma that cyberbullying can have on an individual? 

The main aim of the film was to visualise the mental health trauma caused by cyber bullying. This type of bullying often goes unnoticed because it is hidden away online, parents do not fully understand the issue because they grew up in a different world and the victims are afraid to speak out about it because the pain is hard to verbalise especially for a younger age group. The bullies may not understand the suffering they are causing, as their actions leave no physical scars. Off Fleek brutally portrays the suffering caused by cyber bullying in an attempt to increase awareness and show audiences what young people are going through. It is extremely important that people gain a better understanding of the trauma caused by cyber bullying as the full impact of that trauma can last a life time.

Finally, what’re you working on next? Do you have any other projects in the pipeline?

I’m currently in the early stages of developing a feature horror film project.