VIRTUOSO A SHORT HORROR FILM
VIRTUOSO is a female-driven horror film- delicious, dark re-imagining of the classical music world, a fever dream of first-night nerves.
The film is a dark and twisted tale - a confrontational look at a woman who dares to be ruthless to achieve creative freedom. Horror is a film genre that hasn't traditionally been associated with female directors. We hope you, our readers, can help us change that.
Female filmmakers need your support to take creative risks and tell dark stories, in an industry that tends to play it safe with the opportunities it provides to women. We need the support of horror fans, cinephiles and the film-loving public who want to see more films made by women. I want to thank Stella Scott for sharing this information with me and for trusting this platform to get the word out there.
// WHY THIS FILM MATTERS //
VIRTUOSO is a film that is unashamed in its ambition to portray violent and uncompromising women on screen. This is something to which there has always been a resistance. But we know there is an audience out there who are eager for these stories to be told, who don't need their female characters to be nice to be worth watching. We want this film to be inspiring and important. We want to pave the path for other female filmmakers to play with the strange and unexpected.
Female characters in the revenge genre tend to be chokingly restrictive: either passive women who exist to serve a male story, or victims seeking retribution for sexual abuse. In VIRTUOSO, Josephine serves no one but herself. She actively takes revenge on her saboteur, and does what she needs to do to succeed. From FATAL ATTRACTION to THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE, women seen in revenge narratives are often depicted as ‘psychotic’ or ‘mad’. Rarely is a woman given such agency as in VIRTUOSO - a film in which a woman uses wild, unwieldy violence as the catalyst behind her creative emancipation.
We hope you will want to join us in making an alternative female narrative - one which moves the goalposts and pushes the audience to see female creativity in a new light.
A Note from the director, Stella Scott , who we’ve previously interviewed.
VIRTUOSO has been my passion project for two years. I’m thrilled that we have been able to assemble such a talented group of creatives to make it happen. On the surface, it’s a familiar narrative - the suffocating mentor who thwarts his student's ambitions. But what makes VIRTUOSO different is its determination to sensationalise this dynamic and narrative, to discover the truth that lies beneath the extreme.
The film will deliberately play with stereotypes and artifice. I love the theatre and melodrama of films like Dario Argento’s SUSPIRIA and Peter Greenaway’s THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER. These films are intrepid and uncompromising. Theatre is key to my work, and VIRTUOSO won’t shy away from the theatre of the classical music world: instead, it will embrace it.
Film Is Co- Written by Victoria Rigby
VICTORIA RIGBY is a writer and actress from Lincolnshire. She studied English at Cambridge and is represented by Independent Talent. Her play GIRL FROM NOWHERE made its US debut last summer in New York, following acclaimed five-star runs at Theatre503, the Pleasance Edinburgh and London’s Other Palace. She is currently developing the TV pilot QUEEN OF CLUBS with director Whitney Mosery (HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD; KING CHARLES III), and was shortlisted for the iFeatures scheme with Stella Scott for their film GRACE. She studied playwriting at the Lyric course led by Duncan Macmillan and Simon Stephens, and as a singer trains with leading vocal coach Mary Hammond. She also plays piano and viola, and VIRTUOSO is partly inspired by her experiences of the classical music world.
We really want to support talented women in making and creating beautiful horror films happen! Please check out link below to be part of this fundraising effort. Thank you.