Anna Maguire
Writer-director
UK & Canada
Anna is British/Canadian writer, director and actress. Her directorial work has screened at festivals including TIFF, Palm Springs, PÖFF Black Nights and the BFI London Film Festival where she was nominated for Best Short Film with YOUR MOTHER AND I in 2016. She has won awards at Rhode Island International Film Festival, The London Short Film Festival, Thessaloniki International Film Festival and Underwire Film Festival among others, was long listed for a BAFTA, and nominated for Best Short Film at the London Critics’ Circle Awards in 2018. CONSTELLATIONS has screened internationally and IT’S NOTHING premiered at TIFF in 2019. As an actress, Anna plays a lead in VIOLATION, which premiered at TIFF in 2020 and screened at Sundance 2021. She is currently writing her first feature AN EMPTY SPACE supported by BFI NETWORK and LIM.
Project
An empty space
Lucy (29) is a winner; a far cry from her unstable Québécoise mother, Jeanne (59) whom she feels both responsible for and contemptuous of. Lucy works in property development where her ruthless actions have gained her no fans in the local community; they accuse her of social cleansing. When Lucy moves out of her mother’s house to start a new life with Dan (38), her boyfriend and boss, Jeanne tries to kill herself. This catapults Lucy into a deep fear that Jeanne will soon try again, abandoning her, so she moves back in with her to keep her alive; though Lucy’s care often crosses the line into cruelty. Lucy’s mental health, already stretched thin on a diet of Capitalist notions of success, begins to fray and her descent into different forms of self-harm; lashing out at others as well as herself; lands her in hospital. When she tells her mother it would have been better if she had succeeded in her suicide attempt so that she wouldn’t have to keep worrying about her, Jeanne kicks her out and Lucy, horrified at herself, descends into a paranoid fear that endangers her own life.
