Meet Liz: Huge heart. Lovable quirks. Crippling social anxiety.
Liz Is Fine is the bat signal to all the people standing in the corner of a party, trying to figure out why you can't seem to manage small talk like everyone else.
This film is to say: you're not alone.
Liz Is Fine follows the title character through the simplest of everyday situations--a trip to the corner store, a morning at the office, a birthday party--which, when you have severe social anxiety like Liz does, are actually anything but simple.
Yet, finding connection with others where she least expects it (and despite sometimes taking refuge in supply closets), Liz ultimately learns to see herself and her world in new ways.
Liz experiences the world a little differently than most. Through hyper saturated colors, quirky sets, and a distinctive rhythm in story and camera movements, the viewer gets a glimpse of how things look and feel through her eyes.
How Liz was born
For so many years, I could not find words to describe the dread and anxiousness that sometimes made even leaving my house an impossible task.
I thought it was just me who desperately calculated how each word might land as I stuttered through any conversation.
Over time I found ways to cope. Years of drama classes helped me get to a point where I can wrap the anxiety in layers of quirkiness, so people can't even tell, but it wasn't until a few years ago that I started to open up more. I’d make a self-deprecating joke about my crippling anxiety, and sometimes the other person would just laugh, but sometimes, I could see them light up with complete understanding. The more I talked about it, the more I found these people. That’s when Liz came to life.
When it’s at a peak, social anxiety is overwhelming and all-consuming. You feel like you’re underwater. Every movement takes twice as much effort and the world around you is distorted. This is what I wanted to bring to the vision of the film.
But we also want to show that just because Liz's life is colored by her social anxiety, she's not fully defined by it. Yes, she struggles with certain things that may come easily to others, but in her own ways, she thrives too. Liz Is Fine is ultimately about her coming to a good place with that.