Director Statement

“A period piece, 18 minutes. A dark, surreal drama. A story about unrequited love, self-acceptance and the limits of the sane mind.

With the script of For I Am Dead, I wanted to show the personal and social struggle to accept the nature of who an individual is, when his/her desires or choices do not correspond to the majority. In this particular case, Oscar is fighting with his repressed homosexuality, but this is just one of many possible incarnations portraying this dilemma.

I chose to set the story at this moment in time, the late 1800s, with the intention to accentuate the fact that these kinds of questions, although they have progressed, are still relevant today.

Will belonging to a minority ultimately end in tragedy?

This story can be extended to any situation of identity repression: Oscar being a victim of a time, an ideology, of himself; Jude being the response to him, in the form of love or hate.

Seen through the eyes of Oscar, the character of Jude embraces a duality between the kind and respectful young man he really is and the devil, the grotesque deformation Oscar projects onto him as a result of his tortured soul.

The unusual use of sound in the film, going in and out of sync at times - as well as a few jump cuts - emphasize Jude's duality and highlight Oscar's loss of sanity, as he is no longer able to tell what's real and unreal. Despite his wealth and status, Oscar was never able to buy people’s minds, not even his own.

What I want to show with this film is what happens inside of a person when they are brutally denied the freedom to choose who they are, the right to define how they want to live.

In this story, Oscar finds relief from his anguish the moment he confesses his love to Jude, but he is rejected and the price he pays is death.

In any case and despite the consequences, this permission to be yourself should start from within.”

Oscar, a middle-aged man, strives to accept his repressed homosexuality.

He was born in a not-so-distant past, when there was still no sign of electricity or modern technology, when the notion of same-sex love was still an unspoken taboo.

The owner of a wealthy mansion in the middle of the countryside, he now lives alone with the sole company of his unmarried maid and his loyal young gardener, Jude, to whom Oscar longs to confess his long hidden love.

Oscar fears he’s running out of time, as his extravagant way of life has caused him many enemies. He lives surrounded by his deepest demons. His declaration of love to Jude is Oscar’s one last wish.

Tonight, a decision will bring him closer to death than ever ...

meet The Director: Patricia Delso Lucas

Patricia Delso Lucas is an independent screenwriter, film director and cinematographer who earned her MFA in Film Directing at the Skillset Screen Academy in Scotland. She was born in Madrid, Spain and is currently based in Brussels, Belgium. Her graduation work was nominated for the BAFTA Scotland New Talent Award in 2010. Then, she participated in various international workshops focused on directing narrative films at NYU, at Sundance Shorts Lab, at Cineuropa.org, at the Prague Film School, at London Film School and at the Maine Media Workshops. She also studied cinematography at the Global Cinematography Institute in Los Angeles. Her work ranges from narrative drama to dark comedy to audiovisual poems and documentaries. The stories she feels drawn to writing and directing are heavily character-driven, and the audiovisual world she builds around them often has a thin line between the real and the surreal.