"In the wake of a traumatic incident at a funeral, an aging widow is faced with an impossible choice"
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
I made Resurrection to honor my late relatives, so I guess it's strange that the film's sole dedication is to someone I have no relation to.
The woman to whom this film is dedicated is named Suzanne Hevner. A mentor of mine for years, she is the person I credit with teaching me how to write comedy. Having taught a class on sketch writing (think SNL, Key & Peele), she took me, her student, under her wing. She passed a few years ago after a lengthy battle with cancer. I dedicate Resurrection to her impact on my writing.
Is Resurrection a comedy? Sort of. It's been categorized by people who've seen it as a dark satire, a love story, a drama in the gothic tradition. My opinion on the genre changes frequently, but I've found myself looking at it as something that is, independent of its other elements, funny.
The idea for Resurrection was born during a massive creative outpouring between the years of 2021 and 2022, following multiple deaths in my family and a few outside of it. Experiencing loss in a meaningful way for the first time, I focused much of my output during these years on processing death, trying to come to terms with it while making art that would stand the test of time (I was fifteen, neither of those things would happen).
Upon rediscovering joy in 2023 (albeit temporarily!), my creative voice got a bit lighter. Resurrection was the only work from that period I kept returning to, its thesis buzzing around in my head. My previous works had focused on how we process grief on an emotional level, but I had never explored how we process grief on an intellectual level. How do people behave through loss? Why does grief make us selfish? To what horrible lengths would you go to never grieve again?
With this focus in mind, I fleshed out this screenplay over the course of three full years. During this time, people came and went from my life, I devoted time and energy to other projects, and at one point, I even submitted a draft of the screenplay to a few competitions, albeit with varying success.
The version of Resurrection committed to the screen by my incredible cast and crew is a thorough and emotional exploration of ethics, loss, and love against the odds, as well as the white whale I have finally caught after four years of discovery, work, and transformation. Ah well, onto the next one.
-S
