At the end of 2013, our friend was violently assaulted by a stranger in New York City. I was horrified to find out about the incident, but also to discover the necessary, but painful and intrusive investigation by the hospital workers and the police afterwards. My friend went through a hard recovery period, finding it difficult to leave her apartment, trust her relationships and to re-acclimatize to the world.

My friend and her experience inspired the character of Bonnie, the protagonist in The Light of the Moon. The film is essentially a love story between Bonnie and her long-term boyfriend, Matt, and it explores the pain, shame, anger, and forgiveness within their relationship following Bonnie's sexual assault.

One in five women will be raped in her lifetime in the United States. This statistic is horrific and we feel it has no place in a modern, “equal” society. Yet, considering the amount of people who are affected by sexual assault in the world, it is an issue very few people want to discuss and that has rarely been explored in film in a realistic manner.

I know it’s not an easy topic to discuss, but I am interested in telling stories that push the boundaries on what is “acceptable cinema”. I feel that cinema is yet to portray a story of rape accurately, fairly and focused on the individual survivor’s recovery and how the assault affects their world and their relationships.

Due to my experience in making documentary films, I tend to approach narrative filmmaking in a similar fashion - both in the development of the script and through my visual aesthetics. I am influenced in this naturalistic style by great filmmakers, such as Richard Linklater, Nicole Holofcener and Derek Cianfrance.

Before writing the first draft of the script, I thoroughly researched the events and characters within the film. I have spoken to several rape and assault survivors, nurses, doctors, social workers and therapists as research for the script. By doing this, it allowed me to strip down the story to the bare facts and focus on the realities of the situation and the natural reactions of the characters.

I trained as an actor from the ages of 12 to 21, and also recently returned to the craft. I love to work intensively with my actors and allow them to explore and create the characters in the rehearsal phase, as much as in the writing process. I encourage them to research real life scenarios and meet with people who have shared similar experiences with their characters. This allows myself and the actors to create multifaceted characters that react in real and deeply personal ways - characters that are driven by complex histories and back-stories.

I prefer a hand-held, fly-on-the-wall approach to my visuals, usually sticking to long, wide and meandering tracking shots with little editing in post-production. I like to allow the audience to lose themselves in the characters and story, almost to the point that they become unaware that they are watching a movie. All of the scenes in the film have Bonnie present on camera and are largely told from her viewpoint. This generates a deeply unique and personal experience, where the audience feels they have a privileged insight into her character, and thus develop great understanding, identification and empathy for the protagonist of the film and her story.

We are making this movie because it is one that needs to be told and sheds light on the reality of sexual violence. For far too long, rape has been shrouded in secrecy due to the stigma placed by society on survivors of rape, which quite often results in victim-blaming. Though it is challenging, we strongly believe that sexual violence needs to be more openly and widely discussed at all levels of society and through art. Within this challenge is an incredible opportunity to tell a story that raises more much-needed awareness about the physical, mental and emotional trauma that is experienced by survivors of rape and to present such a struggle in a realistic manner on film.