Director: ANDREA ARNOLD
23 year-old Zoë ought to be wild and free but she’s already got four kids. WASP takes place on a day when Zoë is broke and her kids are hungry. When Dave, an old flame, swings by with the offer of brief release she lies about being a mum and leaves her kids outside the pub. Nearby, late summer wasps are hunting for food around an old rubbish bin.
Wasp was Andrea Arnold’s third short, which won over 30 international festival awards and the Oscar for Best Short Film in 2005. Her first feature film, Red Road, premiered in competition at Cannes winning the Jury Prize in 2006.
‘I write usually because I have an image in my head that I can’t shake off and that is how Wasp started. That particular image forms the climax of the film. Everything else is a mix of my childhood and imagination.
The main aim for the film was to try and show the central character Zoë in all her complexity. I know the way she treats her kids is not good, verging on abuse really but I wanted to show why she might do that and for the audience to have empathy for her as well as the kids. I wanted to show how a person’s circumstances and environment influences the way they essentially are. I wanted people to understand her behavior instead of just condemning it. This was my main goal for the film’.
There is no commentary for this film.
Courtesy of Andrea Arnold, KurzFilmAgentur Hamburg and Channel 4/UKFC
