Synopsis

An imaginative 9 year-old dyslexic girl, repeatedly facing difficulties with her daily tasks, discovers her superpower, after a visit in her dream from a powerful ocean creature.

The Girl behind the Shrimp

This is not a fiction film, neither a non-fiction film, but part of an experiment, very much inspired by Edgar Morin’s (1985: 6) statement about the Chronicle of a Summer (Rouch & Morin, 1961): “This film is research … it is an experiment lived by its authors and its actors.” 

First came the idea of making a non-fiction film about my partner’s 9-year-old niece Meabh, who in April 2022 had just been diagnosed with dyslexia. Faced with the extreme difficulty of how to represent the “truth” about such a personal experience, especially since the subject is a kid, who is still discovering ways to communicate with the adult world, I decided to come up with a more playful way of exploring together with Meabh the new reality she had been immersed to. 

And that is when the idea of the Mantis Shrimp was conceived, a fiction film about self-discovery, with a 9-year-old dyslexic girl who discovers her superpowers, inspired by the colourful and powerful mantis shrimp. 

Meabh’s creativity and spark was a catalyst in drawing the story arc and filling in essential details of her character’s profile in the script. I had an interview with Meabh before writing the script, and combined with ideas from an extended research on dyslexia, from scientific articles, documentaries, and people’s testimonies on social media, I wrote the first version of the script. Apart from Meabh’s ideas and the inspiration I got from her interview, essential was the close collaboration with Jiale, Harry, Amy and Dai Qing from my group, who helped with solving narrative issues and offered creative ideas. 

The idea for the mantis shrimp as Meabh’s alter-ego, is based on the fact that the mantis shrimp, older than dinosaurs, sees 4 times more colours than humans do, and their vision is extended to the ultraviolet and infrared regions, plus polarised light, making her the animal with the most powerful vision on the planet. Add to that the fastest punch in the animal kingdom, including humans, which protects her from predators and wins her prey. Children often identify themselves with animals, due to their compassionate nature and imagination, and this rainbow-coated, stubborn and feisty creature was the perfect metaphor for Meabh’s artistic creativity, cheekiness, rascality and sense of humour.

Meabh’s character is not in conflict with the world, nor her family, nor her nature, but with herself. She realizes that the only way she can learn from life, develop, enjoy and be happy, is to accept herself and transform her weaknesses into strength. 

Bibliography

Morin, E. (1985) ‘Chronicle of a Film’, Studies in Visual Communication, 11(1), pp. 4–29.