Lady Lazarus

Director’s statement

"After my best friend took her own life, the executer of her will allowed me (director Willemiek Kluijfhout) to spend an hour in her apartment. To take a few things that were meaningful to me and to say goodbye to her last residence, a place where her ghost perhaps still wandered. I looked at her books, music, paintings and knicknacks that were once so important. Did they contain clues? Everything was put into a new light by her final act. Everything felt important to understand what had happened, so I filmed and photographed it all.
After her death, in the following years, I never looked at that material again, and lost touch with most of her other friends and family. Nobody really spoke about it. And it was really hard to mention her name between us groups of friends. This is something that happens more often after suicide, because it's such a difficult topic, and a complex grief. With LADY LAZARUS I would like to address this and open up the conversation.
Often, when if I mention her death, people always ask me why? Why did she do it? As if there were one clear reason, one cause that inevitably led to her decision. I think that’s how we try to make sense of it, as though we could predict it, or have control over it. It reflects our tendency to perceive life as a linear story. With this interactive VR documentary, I want to challenge that notion. That’s also why VR feels essential: a completed life is not the same as a completed story.

Our approach for the immerisve experience is twofold: we create a narrative-driven path that you follow with curiosity through five rooms. I will interview her friends, and turn their memories into story segments about how each of them sought an answer to the why question. These voices are linked to objects you can choose in the rooms you explore. Between the rooms, you will hear me guiding you as a narrator, reflecting on their answers and on the space grief occupies after her suicide. Through this weaving path, you are invited to find your own way of thinking about grief, sudden loss, and the importance of that inevitable why question." - Willemiek Kluijfhout