SOPHIA RALSTON

Application film to the theme «The beginning of the end». A short musical Performance of the piece «Cell Block Tango» from «Chicago». 

Blue Balloon was made for the 2017 Zurich Film Festival Challenge 72 to the theme «blue».

Eine Produktion aus dem JugendFilmCamp. Zusammenarbeit mit Leonard Graf. Vertiefte Beschreibung folgt mit der öffentliche Version.

Waterfall was made for the 2016 Zurich Film Festival Challenge 72 to the theme «water».

This short film about ADHD tells the story of experiences I myself and people around me have made, who suffer from ADHD. This was my high school graduation project and it received not only top marks but also awarded one of the best projects of the year. I wanted to address people who knew very little about ADHD, affected or not, and show how appallingly society and the school system deal with the topic (of course with exceptions). What I portrayed in this film is merely what I have experienced myself. I have since heard stories a lot more horrible. It is impossible to pack all I wanted to say about ADHD into 35min but this is my first attempt. If you suffer from ADHD and/or want to know more, please contact me and I would love to talk about it. I do ask you NOT to contact me with messages like "Drugs are bad, you should except who you are." or "ADHD doesn't exist, it's a label invented by the drug industry" especially if you don't have the syndrome yourself. In the film, Alex, the protagonist in this story, takes Ritalin whereas her friend Ruby doesn't. I am aware that Ritalin has very different effects on different people. In this short film I am most definitely NOT praising Ritalin or any kind of drug designed to help with the syndrome (such as Adderall or Concerta), I am merely defending its general use and saying it can in some cases help you a lot (which it did in my personal case). Hence the two characters: for some it works, for some it doesn't. I hope you forgive my amateur level of technical abilities, as this is the very first film I've made at the age of 17, with no filmmaking training at this point. I would love to hear your feedback and yes opinions about the topic as long as it is not offensive. I also wrote a paper in which I show how I chose to portray certain symptoms in my film. I also talk about other aspects such as ADHD in literature and pop culture or my thought behind creating the characters and scenes. If you would like to read this, I’d be very happy to send it to you. Here is a link to various factsheets written by Dr Russell Barkley, a professor specialised in ADHD from whom I have learnt a great deal: http://www.russellbarkley.org/factsheets.html Here is a Youtube link to one of Russell Barkley's speeches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSfCdBBqNXY You can also watch all my films on my website: www.sophiaralston.com