When a young lesbian’s first romantic relationship is stolen by a brutal rape, she must learn forgiveness from an unlikely source – her estranged, mentally ill mother.
Julia, a spirited 14-year-old lesbian whose first romantic relationship is brutally stolen by an assault. Through fragmented vignettes and abstract visuals, the film delves into Julia's first love, her violent loss of innocence, and her evolving relationship with her estranged, mentally ill mother. This thought-provoking exploration of trauma challenges traditional narrative structures to contemplate resilience and recovery in a deeply immersive manner. Captivating and viscerally poignant, "The Thing I Want to Say" serves as a poetic testament to the transformative nature of forgiveness amidst darkness and pain.
Carrie Schrader is an award-winning writer-director of short films, commercials, and feature-length films. She co-directed the short film “Don’t Mess With Texas” with Tricia Cooke and Ethen Coen (Coen brothers) and directed the Netflix commercial “Batdad: Battle For Bedtime” (Peacock, Amazon). She currently earns her living from multiple write-for-hire contracts specializing in adapting real-life stories into film and television. Her latest is with A Really Good Home Pictures, which just debuted “Unstoppable,” produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Her films have won film festival awards internationally, and she’s honed both leadership and collaborative spirit in the Orchard Project Episodic Lab, the Outfest Screenwriting Lab, IFP, and the Austin Film Festival. She is the creator of #nicewhitemom videos, which critically explore with comedy how white women perpetuate racism. Carrie has a ridiculously expensive but surprisingly useful MFA in directing from Columbia University and will be forever proud of her early days as a theater nerd.
