Natalia Leite(I)

[on M.F.A. (2017) as 'therapy'] I felt like I had to make this movie because I have a personal connection to it, I had gone to art school, I had been sexually assaulted during art school. I hadn't really been vocal about my own experience, because I just did not want to be 'that girl' when it happened. I was ashamed, and for a lot of reasons just didn't talk about it. This is me being able to go back and process it and speak openly about it, even to my own family. (...) I highly recommend it ! Being able to do that as therapy is very powerful. I didn't go into it thinking, 'this is going to be super-transformative,' I went into it super-scared, but knowing like, 'Okay, you gotta go do this now,' I'm having a conversation with myself, and one part of me is saying, 'Just do it.' I felt like I had to do it, I was terrified of shooting the rape scene, I was terrified of having to talk about me having my own personal experience with it. The whole thing just freaked me out. 'What will this mean? Am I welcoming this [back] into my life that I tried to hard to push away and pretend like it didn't happen?' But I knew that if I'm doing something that really terrifies me, I should just go ahead and do it. I just started taking baby steps. [Oct. 2017]