Misery and Other Choices

Director's Statement

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT BY SAMUEL LUCAS ALLEN This film originated as a vacant, violent daydream. While making this film, I found that almost everyone I encountered shared my fantasy. While writing this, some are on trial for enacting it. ‘Misery and Other Choices’ is a film about rage, fear, and our values. It’s about my generation, a group of people, myself included, who have become very good at talking the talk of progressive politics and revolution, but have been incredibly idle in manifesting those values and ideologies into reality. It wonders when the opportunity to live your beliefs is violently presented to you - what will you do, and how far will you go? The production of this project has been an absolute fantasy in all senses of the word. In conception, I imagined this to be my least ambitious film. In practicality, it has been the most complex logistical endeavour of my brief filmmaking career. I have been so blessed to work with such an incredible crew who have believed in the vision and message of this work and held the space for us to dream it into existence collectively. This film is for all of the crew and everyone who is angry about how the world is. PRODUCER'S STATEMENT BY RICHARD JAMES ALLEN Let’s not beat around the bush. 'Misery and Other Choices' is not just a timely film; it is a potentially incendiary film. In the days after the assassination of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, and the very public execution of MAGA activist Charlie Kirk, film festival curators may be asking themselves, how can we possibly play 'Misery and Other Choices’? It would be like playing a short film about the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand on the eve of World War I. And yet, I humbly offer the question back, how can you not play it? What is the purpose of a film festival if not to engage with its moment? And, in fact, to engage in a more complex way than much of current divisive public discourse? Let me explain how this film might actually make a useful contribution to grappling with this tremendously dangerous moment. 'Misery and Other Choices' is nothing like the murder of Kirk. Deliberately planned killings of divisive white male leaders by disturbed loner young white men, with inappropriate access to long range rifles, is nothing like the MAGA fantasy of an ultra-liberal minority agitator intent on dismantling the ruling elite. ‘Misery and Other Choices’ explores and ultimately explodes that very right-wing fantasy. It depicts an angry young woman of colour enacting a savage primal moment. Clearly her actions are not assassination, but a mercy killing, however they raise questions - is this justice, is this retribution, is this an act of rebalancing or destroying the natural order? The film problematises and humanises these questions in the tradition of various classic and controversial works of cinema which have brought their audiences inside the consciousnesses of those whose choices they may strongly disagree with. It is unusually bold. It is unusually brave. It sensitively dramatises difficult questions for public consideration. The film’s final gesture towards fantasy empathetically acknowledges how challenging it is to deal with all this discomfort by shifting gears into a kind of magic realism. The real question remains: will you match this film’s courage by screening it and creating space for public discussion and debate around the many issues it raises and the terrible choices we currently face.