A woman discovers that her inner voice has been lying to her in Director Justine Bateman’s drama, Violet.
Bateman’s film tells the story of Violet, a film executive who realizes that she has spent years allowing fear to drive her every decision and must learn to silence her relentlessly negative inner thoughts in order to regain control over her life.
On November 19, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Bateman discussed the making of Violet during a Q&A moderated by Director Aaron Schneider (Greyhound).
During the Los Angeles conversation, Bateman spoke about why she opted to make film about an internal kind of struggle as opposed to something more plot driven.
“What interests me as a filmmaker are little things in our life that are big earthquakes. There are things that you can't come back from, like the first time you steal something, or you lose your virginity. I feel like films often, if they're focusing on some earthquake in someone’s life, they're focusing on something massive like your mate dies or someone is killed. But I think there's all these smaller earthquakes that are quite profound in someone's life. So, I'm interested in splitting those open and sort of butterflying them and looking at them. I wanted to make this as immersive an experience as possible and that's why I use so many audio and visual elements.”
Violet is Bateman’s feature directorial debut. Her other directorial credits are the television documentary, Speechless, and the short films, Five Minutes and PUSH.
Bateman has been a DGA member since 2019 and serves as a member of the Western Directors Council.
You can listen to Bateman's Q&A by clicking the podcast episode embedded below. You can find more DGA podcast episodes here.