DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

UNDER THE WATER is a strange tale about an 11-year-old girl confronted with male violence. With the help of the sirens of the sea, she is able to push back.

When an eleven-year-old girl is confronted with misogynistic taunts and violence from the boys in her town, a series of strange happenings lead to her revisit a storybook about the sirens of the sea. Inspired by these strange creatures, she finds the power in herself to push back.

Through the making of this film, I wanted focus on an important contemporary issue - violence against women. Our society is rife with learned assumptions and habits that are normalised; cat-calling, stalking and aggression, for example. In 2024 we have seen terrifying evidence that violence against women is still an issue globally. With the film as a transformative force for social change, my creative process was guided by a desire to provoke reflection and resonance; I wanted focus on the types of behaviours that have been normalised within my own experience, in the hope that it may ring true for others.

The film is intended as a lyrical exploration of the insidious undercurrent of misogyny that many women are faced with in everyday life. The work is framed through a series of interactions between a young girl and men of different ages. Fascinated by the power of myths to conceal the horrors of the real world through metaphor, I drew on the symbolism of the sirens to reflect our protagonist’s own journey to empowerment.

We worked with a diverse team to bring UNDER THE WATER to life. 51% of the cast and crew identified as female, non-binary or gender diverse. Many of our team members identified as part of the LGBTQIA+ community also.

UNDER THE WATER premiered at the Flickerfest 33rd International Film Festival in January 2024, selected from 3400 entries. It has gone on to screen at Montreal Women Film Festival (2024), Atlanta Women Film Festival (2024), Toronto Women Film Festival and LA Women in Film Festival (2024), as well as receiving semi-finalist status at Rhode Island Film Festival (2023).

Isabella Andronos, Writer/Director