Liz Whitmere's horror short, Cold, will have its world premiere at Blood in the Snow in the coming days. We are pleased to share with you the trailer from Cold. Check it out down below.
Jane likes things to be clean. Jane has just turned 40. Jane died sometime lastweek.She’s cold all the time, her skin is grey, and her appetite is nonexistent. Something is terribly wrong.Her doctor, her friends, her partner, all tell her it’s normal - this happens to women of a certain age. Her friends are showing signs of decay themselves… it’s just the reality of The Change. The important thing is not to let yourself go. Despite her body decaying at an alarming rate, Jane tries to “fake it till she makes it.”
To understand more about Whitmere's intentions we've included their director's statement.
Women’s health has historically been disregarded by Western medicine - from the barbaric practice of performing hysterectomies to cure emotional dysregulation, to medicating women into social compliance, to the modern average wait time of 10 years for an endometriosis diagnosis. The recently increased awareness of neurodivergence 1 in women and girls has led to a growing population of newly-diagnosed women who have spent their lives white-knuckling just to survive. We now have words to describe a wider range of experience, but the majority of therapies available are still focused on “appearing normal.”I have not pursued formal diagnosis for myself, though I suspect I’m some version of “neurospicy”. I have moved through my life relying heavily on social mimicry to fit in, and often feel like I’ve pieced myself together from discarded components. Add to that the pressures I feel as a woman to appear youthful and slim, especially as I pass 40, and it creates a perfect storm. We’re moving through a period of disingenuous normalcy, with the pandemic declared “over” despite overflowing emergency rooms and millions disabled by the virus that changed the world. The life-altering impact of perimenopause is understudied to a comical degree. Neurotypical or not, the cognitive dissonance is enough to pull anyone apart. Women are not actually walking around dead and decaying, but it feels that way. It’s normal. Look pretty. Get a manicure. If you feel terrible, it’s not menopause… it’s probably because you’re not doing enough yoga.
Cold stars Melanie Scrofano (Wyonna Earp, Letterkenny, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds) and Sean Baek (Killjoys, Utopia Falls, Blood and Water). The world premiere is on November 25th as part of the Mournful Mediums BITS Shorts Program.