Fragmented

Director Statement

Ever since I first saw the prosthetic masks developed by Anna Coleman Ladd from the First World War, I was fascinated by the efforts to recreate the likeness of a person and how they steeped into the uncanny valley. The implementation of a moustache to create the illusion of a face, glasses where their only functional purpose was to hold the mask, felt as if were an attempt to regain a sense of normalcy, but under the surface the scars of war remain.

While much praise was attributed to these masks for the breakthrough at the time, their are very few accounts on the lives of the veterans that obtained these masks after the war. History has proved that life for veterans of the First World War was challenging, through post-war economy, disability, and underlying effects of shell-shock, or what is known today as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. With these factors in mind, I hypothesised what life for a disfigured veteran could have been, to recontextualize our current understanding of trauma and PTSD in a period where the characters do not have that same understanding.

The title ‘Fragmented’ was inspired by the early to mid-twentieth century texts made during or after the First World War, such as ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ and ‘The Waste Land’, where the writings reflected the fragmentation of a person’s consciousness in the wake of a traumatic event, but the word could also be attributed to physical appearance of the disfigured veteran, or to the strained relationship in the family.

While the film depicts a story set in the past, the themes and trauma of war unfortunately remain relevant today. In Ireland I have meet and talked to people that have experienced or are linked to the traumas of war and conflict, wether it is from Syria, Ukraine, or Gaza, and it is possible that you or someone you know have meet a someone with a similar background. I hope that the people that will watch the film take away the importance of recognising trauma and it’s lasting effects, how it affects survivors and the people around them, to not be judgemental and remain opened minded, and open hearted.