in the undersea everything is perfect (2025)
short-film
directed and edited by me
camera by Meta, Katharina Erlinger and me
documented on drag lab and drag im hörsaal (queer referat der htu wien
/Sinopse: The character known as the Rat Lady drowns rats, but rather than seeing this as a tragedy, she perceives it as a moment of liberation .
My project develops from a short film and a reinterpretation of Henrik Ibsen’s Little Eyolf. Traditionally read as a villainous or ethically ambiguous figure,
the Rat Woman can be connected to a broader genealogy of characters coded as queer in children’s or popular narratives, often associated with
strangeness
and mystification. Rather than repeating this moral framing, I rewrite her as a figure of care, collectivity, and rupture.
Beyond this character, the project focuses on a narrative moment conventionally understood as tragic, drowning, reframing it as an ambiguous state
situated between exclusion and liberation, and drawing a parallel with queer forms of resistance and refusal. The visual construction of the short film
culminates in the gesture of stepping onto the stage, here understood as a metaphor for ascension, affirmation of visibility, and the rejection of all that
is imposed from the outside.