Director's Statement

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One of the main themes that I wanted to explore with Don't Tell Dad, was the fear of becoming like our parents and how much do our parents actually affect who we eventually become? How much are we defined by the sins that our parents commit?

 

When listening to stories of actual children of serial killers, one central idea that constantly came up was the deep fear of just waking up one day and ending up killing someone, solely because they share the same blood with their parent. I think this idea of not wanting end up like our parents and accept the parts of us of that makes us like them, is something that most of us can relate to in our own lives one way or the other. Don't Tell Dad is just an extreme example of this. This also brings up the idea of nature v. nurture - can we actually even control who become, or is our destiny already assigned from birth based on our genetics?

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It was important for me to emphasise the psychological journey that Ava goes through in the film - in the start she is unaware of who she truly is because she is in deep denial, but by the end her true instincts take over and she has to face the fact, that she is just like her father, or perhaps even worse. 

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