I'll Try To Explain It - A TMU Thesis Film

A heartfelt queer docu-fiction that explores friendship and the struggles of queer marginalized identities

WE'LL TRY TO EXPLAIN IT!

Hi! My name is Gabriela Ribeiro and I am the producer of this film working with Lucia Fella Pellegrino, the director and Co-writer of our TMU Thesis Film:

"I'll Try To Explain It"

STORY

When a lesbian filmmaker is haunted by intimate dreams of her white high school ex-boyfriend, she embarks on a documentary reuniting with him and reenacting the dreams, awaking truths about her complicated relationship with men.

The film is scheduled to shoot Mid January 2025, and it will premiere in May at the Toronto MET Film Festival!

However, before we are able to make this film come to life, we need funding to support our production costs.

BUDGET BREAKDOWN

100% of your donation will be going towards funding our film. This will be used for a variety of things, such as:

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

"The queer female relationship with straight, white cis men, is something that I think about a lot. It is a strained and sometimes painful relationship that I wasn’t fully aware of until it became too obvious to ignore in my life. It’s worth noting here that I don’t use the identifiers “white, straight, cis men” to homogenize a large group of people whose opinions, actions and character are widely diverse. Instead I use it because it is the most appropriate term to denote the people in our society who have been given the most power, the most privilege, whether they are aware of it or not, and for all intents and purposes, to describe the types of people that have caused the complicated relationships this film wishes to explore.

Where the straight female relationship to this group is commonly discussed in mainstream cinema, I have found that the queer relationship seems to be forgotten or ignored, and proves harder to find. This is a story which explores that perspective, and most importantly, seeks to bring it to the forefront.

The script began with a series of conversations myself and my co-writer Auguste Kociuba had with our queer and AFAB friends. Although we talked to people from many different backgrounds and who’d lived widely different lives, we found that we’d all been feeling these deep, intimate, dark, inarticulable feelings towards straight, white, cis men. The feelings felt vast and multifaceted:

they felt like longing 

like envy

like disgust 

like anger

like aching

like a haunting, even. 

They felt heavy and light

Big and small.

Somehow, despite ourselves, despite our education and feminist mindsets, we all idolized them in some way too, wanted to be them, felt drawn to them, gave them power even when we didn’t realize we were doing it. This is I’ll Try To Explain It, our best guess at addressing all of these notions.

This film is a conversation that aims to explore how the power of straight, white, cis men not only affects queer AFAB people, but all people, despite our identities. While the film may not possess many answers, it can offer questions that will hopefully prompt viewers to talk to one another, and spark meaningful conversations about these important themes."

- Lucia Fella Pellegrino 

When you are donating to this film, you are donating to queer filmmakers and queer stories. Your support means the world to us and we hope that this story makes you feel seen and understood.

OTHER WAYS TO HELP

If you can't donate, but would still love to help us in this journey, please share our posts on your stories and tell your friends about our film! We really appreciate any kind of support <3

Our IG/TikTok account: @illtrytoexplainit