Bad Seed
Synopsis: 1962. A lonely house in the English countryside. Rose, 16, plays a two-player board game alone. Each time she rolls the dice, we are pulled further into her fragmented world. With a mother who cannot understand her, Rose's only solace is found in glimmering moments spent with her sister, playing games and telling secrets at the bottom of the garden. As Rose struggles to piece together her fractured memory, the threat of intervention by the family doctor looms over the household
Director’s statement:
With BAD SEED, I wanted to explore the way mental health issues thread through generations and create traumatic divisions within families. The character of Rose is based on my great aunt, who suffered from psychosis and was forced to have a lobotomy against her will. There aren’t many depictions of lobotomies onscreen; even fewer explore how the procedure was weaponised as an agent of control against women. BAD SEED aims to draw attention to the historical atrocity of lobotomy and the systematic ways in which the medical establishment has failed and abused women. Moreover, this film is a way to offer my great aunt the sympathy and love she desperately needed but never received.
Director Biography - Barnaby Brown
BARNABY BROWN is a film and theatre director from Kent. A recent graduate of the prestigious BA Film Practice course at UAL London College of Communication, his work is highly collaborative and offers a darkly poetic take on family, love and loss. Having worked with the BFI Academy, National Youth Theatre, and most recently as a Young Curator for the Young Vic, Barnaby is continuing to develop his practice in London and the Southeast.