White Noise

A film by Tamara Scherbak

Short film – Psychological Thriller - Québec, Canada – 2023 – 16:54 mins

SYNOPSIS

Ava's debilitating hyper-sensitivity to sound is becoming unliveable. Her doctor’s prescription of exposure therapy backfires as she descends into a fit of panic in both her class and the subway. When her attempt at suicide fails, she pleads with her doctor to enrol her in an experimental trial involving an anechoic chamber: the world's quietest room. The doctor has his reservations, but Ava is convinced this is the ticket to her salvation. In this soundless space, her euphoria quickly mutates into madness when she begins to hear the inner workings of her own body.

CAST

Bahia Watson | Ryan Hollyman | Guifre Bantjes-Rafols |Hojo Rosenstein
Jennifer Roberts | Artemysia Fragiskatos

TEAM

Director: Tamara Scherbak
Screenwriters: Tamara Scherbak & Christina Saliba
Producer: Christina Saliba
Executive Producer: Anne-Marie Gélinas
Director of Photography: Roland Cody Larocque
Production Design: Christina Vincelli
Costume Design: Marie-Elyse McGuire
Sound Design: Sylvain Bellemare
Sound Mix: Hans Laitres
Editor: Craig Scorgie

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"A tragic tale of a woman overwhelmed with the agony and misery of misophonia, White Noise packs one hell of a punch. Tamara Scherbak has brought us a superb short film."

Upcoming on Screen
"This truly is more than just a film; it’s an immersive experience that stirs dialogue and contemplation long after the screen fades to black.”

Overly Honest Film Reviews
"White Noise works as a powerful indictment of all the ways the healthcare system fails those in need by not listening to their lived experiences of pain. Ava’s final violent decision, an effort to stop her pain, is a horror film rejection of the white patriarchal structures that forces people experiencing pain to seek out their own remedies, often to their brutal detriment.”

Father Son Holy Gore

Tamara Scherbak

DIRECTOR

Tamara Scherbak has written and directed a body of work across the genres of fiction, documentary and experimental cinema that have travelled to film festivals around the globe. Notable works include “Dedashka” (2009), winner of Best Director at the Montreal Festiv’elles Film Festival for women filmmakers, “Only Sky & Water” (2011), which screened in competition at the Hot Docs Film Festival and “Is Your Teen a Homosexual?” (2018), 1 of 9 scripts selected for development at the 2015 Berlinale Talents Short Form Station. That short fiction film has screened at over 30 film festivals such as NewFest, Rendez-vous Québec Cinema and the Kyiv International Short Film Festival.

Tamara has also directed work for the National Film Board of Canada, and Vice Quebec including the 4-part series “For The Better”. She is an alumna of multiple prestigious talent labs of the Toronto, Berlin and Reykjavik International Film Festivals as well as the Netflix-Banff Diversity of Voices Initiative.

Most recently, she was selected for the Harold Greenberg Fund Shorts-to-Features program with producer Christina Saliba for the project “White Noise”, which was also funded by SODEC and will be streaming on Crave.

Tamara’s Vision

When producer and co-writer Christina Saliba came to me a few years ago now wanting to create a film about a hyper-sensitivity to sound and use the genre of psychological thriller as a vehicle to tell the story, we bonded over shared sensibilities as I quickly became immersed in creating the world of ‘White Noise’.

The film brings the audience along on a journey into the world of our main character, Ava, who suffers from an excruciating allergy to sound. From her perspective, her life in itself is a horror film and it was so crucial to create a powerful all-encompassing sound design that reflected that lived experience. Filming inside a real anechoic chamber was also so key in creating the tense and claustrophobic atmosphere as Ava spirals into psychosis hearing the inner workings of her own body.

The film is ultimately an exploration on the invisibility of pain, and in particular the invisibility of women’s pain, and I hope ‘White Noise’ will foster viewers to have greater understanding and empathy for the lives of those who suffer in silence.