Why I'm making this film

It's never too late to start.

I wanted to make a film about the ways we shut each other out. On the surface it’s a black comedy about a gadget everyone secretly wants, but underneath it’s about control, and how easily a man under pressure convinces himself that silencing the people he loves is a way of protecting them. Magical realism lets the audience laugh first, then sit with what they’ve just laughed at.

I spent twelve years producing other people's work before I wrote and directed my first short, An Imperfect Cadence. If you've ever felt that making a film is for someone younger, better connected or better funded, I hope this one shows you otherwise.

Synopsis

Dean has a lot to hide. Not only has he lost his job as an estate agent, but his savings have vanished into a failed restaurant. His wife Hannah knows none of it. Every question edges closer to the truth.

When his brother hands him a battered old remote control with the power to put people on mute, he spies a way to cover his tracks.

At first the silence feels like a miracle. For the first time in months, Dean can hear himself think. But the more he reaches for the button, the more he risks losing the very family he’s trying to protect.

Remote Silence is a darkly comic short film that grounds one impossible object in the ordinary chaos of family life: a suburban home, a man under pressure, and a remote that does exactly what we’ve all wished for.

A funny, unsettling and quietly heartbreaking take on coercive control, it asks the question: when we silence the people who challenge us, who are we really protecting?