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A filmmaker hires an actor to portray herself and go to Augsburg, Germany in an attempt to reconnect with her estranged and reluctant father.
Finding Dad explores how my parents’ unresolved past shaped my life. Frustrated by patterns I couldn’t escape, I traveled to Germany to find my estranged father. Armed with a camera, I tracked him down and spent one hour with him. I left with more questions than answers. That became the starting point for the film.
Blurring reality and fiction, Finding Dad reimagines that journey through performance. An actress plays me, a documentarian searching for the father she never met. I then play an actor Brit hires to meet her father in her place. What began as a device to tell the story became an exploration of what performance could reveal.
Taking on the role of myself allowed me to experience my own story from the outside and then step back inside it. New to being in front of the camera, I learned to express myself through my body and voice while repeatedly reliving one of the most difficult moments of my life. People called the process brave, but I never felt brave. I felt like I was surviving. I needed to embrace it, turn everything over, and get to the bottom of it so I could finally move on. Through performance, I discovered a way to access things I couldn't reach through words alone.
Most unexpectedly, acting gave me a way to have empathy for myself. I don't think I could have given myself that empathy directly. It would have felt awkward or indulgent. But performance allowed me to step outside myself and return to what happened without judgment. I could feel it, accept it, and eventually let it go.
Finding Dad became an exploration of how stepping outside ourselves through performance can bring us closer to who we are.