Log Line:

A day in the life of an autistic teen, masking to get by.

Synopsis:

In full technicolor - Rayane is getting ready for school, she’s almost finished, she’s done her make up, her hair, and lastly, she opens her closet and we see not clothes, but rows and rows of masks - not just any masks, but masks of Rayane’s smiling face. She takes one, takes a deep breath in, and puts it on.

She walks to the bus station, goes to school, walks the hallways, sits in class, sits with friends at lunch – no one reacts to her mask, they treat her as if it’s not there.

She enters the bathroom, she’s the only one here. Slowly she takes off the mask. For the first time, we see that she is fully monochrome, black and white. She has bags under her eyes, tightness around the mouth, she’s sweaty from effort. She leans on the sink, taking in deep breaths, giving herself a moment. She washes her face, dries it, then looks in the mirror, long and hard. A deep breath, the technicolor mask goes back on and she exits.

Her front door opens, she is home. She pulls the mask off and collapses from exhaustion. It’s 4:30pm. The colorful mask is on the floor in tatters. Rayane’s color starts to come back as she sleeps.

Why Now? Why Me?

This story is deeply personal: my daughter was diagnosed as on the ASD spectrum just shy of her 14th birthday. She would come home from school and be fast asleep by 5pm many days, having spent all her energy pretending. We asked for help - from the NHS (National Health Service), from CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service), from her school, from a CBT therapist - and were constantly signposted to different websites to read about anxious children. It took two years to finally get help and understand what was really going on.

There is a deep need for education, exposure and representation of neurodiversity, so that there can be better support even without diagnosis. (The current waitlist for assessment of ADHD or ASD in teens is over four years in my London borough.) Even within my own nuclear family there was a fear of “labeling” her as Neurodiverse. My response: being neurodiverse is information, data, not a label. A label is that she is “difficult”, “challenging”, “badly behaved” - all adjectives that had been used by her school, because her environment made it impossible for her to learn, as she spent all her energy pretending to be OK.

I am actively recruiting artists who are neurodivergent, or in relationship with neurodiverse humans, so we can be as authentic as possible in the making of this film.

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