SYNOPSIS

Paid Mourners follows a family of professional mourners, where the unique trade is passed down through the women of the household. But 16-year-old Margo, a rising TikTok star, has no interest in continuing this decidedly unglamorous tradition. Her resolve is tested when her grandmother, Bavo, announces she has one week to live. With Margo’s mother absent, the responsibility of inheriting the family legacy falls on her. Determined to pass on the mantle, Bavo has only seven days to help Margo prepare her for the role she was born to take.

INTENTION

I grew up around skateboarders and that experience has deeply influenced me. In truth, it is sort of haunting me. They as a unity are unique, very lethargic and impervious, as well as amorphous and free. It is a cocoon of some sort, a safe haven. I have never been

a part of something like it since. I still cannot fully grasp these experiences, especially the feeling that overwhelmed me. It is as elusive as were the people - never anchored, always floating.

So is Spot. His time is at a standstill, without a clear beginning or ending, vacillating like his decisions and actions. Nor here, nor there, everything and nothing is happening, as if his life is progressing but he is not moving. I am familiar with that state, but he is living it. I find his perplexing nature an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Spot is an effort to find understanding for what I yet have not been able to, but maybe even more my desperate need to feel all of it over again.