Traveller

Director's Statement

The story is not in those who go on fantastic voyages, but in those who are left in their wake. This idea is the key to the world of Traveller. In a city that never sleeps, every now and then a soul breaks away from the cycle of their days and seeks escape from the bright lights that once drew them in. When they do, there is a man who can tell them how to escape. They say he knows how to find a way to other worlds, because he came from one. I told the story of Sara because to me the story starts when someone finds their way out. What becomes of the people left behind? Are they to forget the person that meant so much to them? How do they re-define themselves? Sara is struggling with these things. Traveller is both the man who wants to help, but also the one who stands in her way. Can someone be both helper, and rub salt in the wound? This film is a proof of concept for a larger screenplay, and as we start in media res, it is more a taste of the storyworld than a complete and closed narrative experience. Nonetheless it was incredibly satisfying to hint at the broader film language of the storyworld - the 16mm B/W film of Pranay's visions; the glimpses of other worlds that Sara sees; the slow discovery of Pranay's face over the course of the film. Even the trains that play such a strong role in the film are present as an aural experience. I've always loved a kind of science fiction that is closer to parable - or magic realism. Tarkovsky's Stalker, or Wong Kar Wai's 2046, or Kieslowski's Double Life of Veronique, all come to mind. With this film, I humbly enter the genre so masterfully explored by my forebears.