Mother's Red Dress - The Film

Synopsis MOTHER'S RED DRESS is a tragic love story about a young man, Paul, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) who's trying to piece together the past after seeing his mother kill her abusive boyfriend.  He leaves home for a small town in Southern California where he meets a young woman, Ashley, who inspires him to rebuild his life. Paul is hopeful for his future with Ashley until he receives an urgent call from his mother. She is dying of cancer and wants to reunite her son with his father who abandoned them years ago. Paul returns home, ready to help his mother and forgive his father, but finds a terrible truth waiting for him.

Director's Statement

This film came about because ever since I first started reading newspapers I would always see an article about parents hurting or killing their children.

I kept trying to get the stories out of my head but there would be more and more incidents reported. I wrote ‘Mother’s Red Dress’ based on some of those articles. When the articles had photos of the abused children I would imagine the kind of life they would have had with if they didn’t go through such horror.

I spoke to child abuse professionals who pointed out that when children are in such trauma they create a fantasy world in order to survive. After pondering on this I came to believe that we all create fantasy worlds to one extent or another to make it in this crazy world.