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​The last scene of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? broke me.

The woman on the beach — not tragic, not horrifying. Just free.

Somewhere nobody could follow her.

That image lived in me for a long time. Around the same time I kept returning to Fortnight by Taylor Swift.

The idea of loving something so completely that it destroys you. That it has always been destroying you.

And you keep going back anyway. That is Mrs Jackson.

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But there was something else driving this film. All Nights Die Young — the feature I have been building toward — has a significant scene in the ocean. I needed to get there first.

I needed to understand what it means to put a camera near water, to direct actors into the sea, to let the ocean be a character and not just a location.

The Daughter's Sunset was my experiment. Mrs Jackson walking into the water was me learning how to film what comes next.

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We shot it in black and white because grief has no color.

It has texture, weight, and sound.

But no color.

We finished it two years ago.

I have been carrying it since.

Some films wait for the right moment to be seen.

And some films were always meant to lead somewhere else."

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Mario Luxxor –