Role: Writer | Director

Logline: After a serendipitous meeting with a psychedelic healer, a once-famous artist takes a subconscious trip to confront the man who destroyed her career.

Synopsis: Tessa isn't living life. The art world thinks she's dead. She is at constant odds with her family because of a mysterious illness that turns her into a pill-popping drunk. But after a serendipitous meeting with a psychedelic healer, she takes a subconscious trip to unravel her traumatic past and confront the man who destroyed career and left her for dead in her heyday in NYC during the late 1990s.

More Background: T.REX is a modern-day story about a woman overcoming PTSD through psychedelic-assisted therapy. Recently, psychedelics, considered schedule 1 drugs, are making a comeback in neuroscience and psychiatry after being publicly and politically demonized since the '70s. Privately-funded research and robust clinical trials have been underway at well-regarded institutions, like Johns Hopkins University and NYU, with promising results in treating mental illnesses. Millions of women have rape-related PTSD, and psychedelic-assisted therapy could benefit these survivors, making T.REX's s underlying theme that psychedelics can heal so relevant.

Sexual harassment and assault have led women to leave their careers, as Tahani does in the film. She cannot remember the period of her life when she worked with Paul Lasson, her mentor, sponsor, and abuser. But with the guidance of Gabriela and the healing powers of psychedelics, Tahani finds new agency in her life. There is also an unspoken theme of healing intergenerational trauma in the film. Tahani's mother and even her grandfather are shown having unresolved trauma that gets passed down to Tahani. I genuinely believe psychedelics have the power to heal across many generations. These are themes we want to explore in the movie. T.Rex is both Tahani's graffiti nom de plume and, later, a metaphor for her extinction as an artist. This is not a female-rage revenge tale, but Tahani's subconscious demon slaying and the subsequent ego 'death' during the funeral scene help her rewrite her past and find her identity again. Tahani is no longer a victim but a survivor.

T.Rex was Sundance Development Lab Finalist in 2022