*Final Girls Berlin Film Festival: VIOLATION*

(content warning: sexual assault)
Written, produced, and directed by Madeleine Sims-Fewer & Dusty Mancinelli, Canada, 2020
In Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli’s feature debut, a troubled woman on the edge of divorce returns home to her younger sister after years apart. But when her sister and brother-in-law betray her trust, she embarks on a vicious crusade of revenge. Violation casts a harrowing and unflinching gaze on the topics of psychological and physical assault in a manner which is unforgiving without straying into the exploitative or facile, as portrayals of its subject matter so often run the risk of being. It’s a decidedly feminist yet brutal take, revealing the true horrors of being gaslit by those you love and trust, and the insidious manner with which a woman’s reliability is so often thrown into doubt. Not for the faint of heart, this dissection of trauma comments on the futility of redemption narratives.