Aftersun - An Author's Voice on Screen

Abstract

Aftersun is self-described by director Charlotte Wells as an "emotional autobiography" because it contains her personal traumatic experiences. The film focuses on 31-year-old Sophie, who looks back at home videos, watching and recalling a holiday to Turkey with her father when she was 11 years old. The events of that trip are uneventful, but the grief hidden by her father and the young Sophie's lack of understanding of him, add a subtle but strong emotional dimension to the film. Through personal artistry, the director allows Aftersun to reveal her personal emotional leanings to the audience, and the purpose of this paper is to explore how she gives voice to herself in the film. This paper will focus on how the director constructs a unique narrative perspective through the medium of home video, how the emotions and relationships of the characters are enhanced or implied through the frame of the camera, and how these designs contribute to the emotional presentation of the film. On this basis, this paper will explore what personal emotions she buried in Aftersun in the context of one of the director's short works.