Daniella DeVinter on Unwell Woman: exploring feminism and Freud through film

Photo Credit: Daniella DeVinter

Cynthia Dong spoke with PhD student Daniella DeVinter after hosting a screening of her latest Gothic short film, Unwell Woman, at the Newnham Arts Society. Set in the 1970s Cambridge, the film explores how medical discourse has been used to oppress women, and the lengths they’ve had to go in fighting back.

Some of us may recognise the film’s protagonist, Lydia Makrides, from the German thriller Dark, and her roles in Dark and Unwell Woman share similarities. Did you always have Lydia in mind when writing the script? What was the casting process like?

I had a picture of the protagonist in my head, and I was lucky enough to find an actor to fit that picture. I posted a casting call on Facebook, plugging the film as a ‘gothic psychodrama’, and was amazed to receive over 50 self-tapes from Cambridge’s film and theatre scene.

Lydia stood out immediately. Everyone was given a short extract from the script to perform, but the way Lydia tapped into the underlying horror of the story blew me away. Her face is a phenomenon! The way she expresses wordless emotion was perfect for a film set in a library, with minimal dialogue and most of the story told through voiceover. And her physicality – that shock of curly hair, the oversized glasses – fit the 1970s setting so perfectly. I actually haven’t seen Dark (I’m a grandma when it comes to Netflix – it’ll be DVDs till my dying day! I’m sure Lydia’s work on Dark helped her channel such a, well, dark role.

The film’s protagonist, a psychology student, reads Freud and Breuer’s Studies on Hysteria. For those unfamiliar with Freudian theories, could you briefly explain them and how they shaped the film, particularly regarding women’s autonomy?

Can I be cheeky and answer your question by not answering it? I don’t want to parrot Freudian theory here, because that would defeat the point of the film. I made a deliberate choice to "deface" the two male characters [the spectres of Sigmund Freud and his collaborator, Josef Breuer]. We never get to see their faces in the film – they’re literally beheaded by the top of the frame. If one of the actors accidently got his head in the shot, it was like: nope, retake! Freud’s already had his 15 minutes of fame! Instead I wanted to create a world populated by women’s faces, visually reclaiming the traditionally male-dominated space of the academy. What we hear on the soundtrack, though, is an overlapping muddle of male voices reciting passages from Studies on Hysteria as the protagonists read the book. I wanted to find a way to represent how these pathologising discourses become pervasive ambient noise, particularly in the 1970s when psychoanalysis was so influential and hadn’t quite yet been reclaimed by women philosophers.

The mother-daughter dynamic is central to the film. What inspired you to explore this relationship, and how does it tie into the larger themes?

I’m half-Danish and grew up with the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, and I always found myself much more fascinated by the wicked stepmothers than the passive princesses. Perhaps it’s just my gloomy Scandinavian temperament talking, but I’m still interested in the darker sides of motherhood — pregnancy as a kind of bodily invasion; social expectations of maternal joy; the taboo around having negative or ‘monstrous’ feelings towards your child.

Unwell Woman grapples with postpartum psychosis, how it clashes with the cultural ideal of the perfect, selfless mother – and the terrible consequences of that clash. In the film, this trauma gets passed down from mother to daughter. I’ve used horror conventions to dramatise this inherited trauma, but also to show how patriarchal discourses perpetuate this lineage. Ultimately, the film asks, "Who is the monster here?" It’s not the mother; it’s the patriarchy that pathologises the unmaternal woman as mad, as a monster.

How has your academic background in German language, literature, and films influenced your filmmaking?

While studying German at Oxford, there was a module on German cinema run by Professor Ben Morgan, who later introduced me to Rainer Werner Fassbinder. That’s how I became "literate" in the language of film, so to speak. But I was approaching it from a very academic, highly theoretical standpoint; I didn’t actually know how to make a film!

So, when I came to Cambridge to do my PhD, I made a simple three-minute short for a Jesus College competition, shot in my student hallway. It was an ultra DIY project – I Gorilla-taped my camera to a wheelie suitcase in lieu of a dolly. To my total surprise, it won the competition back in 2021, and that led to a job offer from the Chief Creative Officer of a London TV company. That one little film opened so many doors: television projects, mini-documentaries, music videos. Now I understand first-hand all the technical and creative and emotional labour that goes into getting a film made — and I bring that knowledge to my PhD. It’s a virtuous circle.

What’s next for you on both your academic and creative journeys?

First up: shut up and write! I need to focus on finishing my PhD. Initially, my project was a theory-heavy analysis of Fassbinder, but I realized that constrained approach didn’t suit my thinking style – or do Fassbinder any justice. Fassbinder was bold and queer and and overspills any attempts to put him in a box. So I shifted to a memoiristic biography, exploring his life and work from a personal angle, and how deeply he and his films resonate with me.

Then it’ll be a matter of finding a publisher. Since it’s an unconventional biography, my supervisor and I are considering publishers that would chime with a slightly whackier approach to life-writing.

Outside academia, I’m juggling a few projects. Unwell Woman is on the festival circuit – after premiering at the Picturehouse in Cambridge, it’ll be coming to the Curzon in Soho as part of the London Short Film Festival in January, and there are more screenings later in the year. I’m in talks about turning it into a feature film, too.

For the small screen, I also wrote the season finale of Patience, a Channel 4 crime drama featuring an autistic protagonist – so keep an eye out for that on 8 January! For now, I’m pouring most of my energies into my PhD, but let’s see which other projects move out of my “rainy day drawer” into the light of day!

Unwell Woman will be screened in the Gothic strand of the London Short Film Festival on 18 January 2025. Book your tickets here.