Awake In The Dark

(2022)

Awake In The Dark is a film which addresses women’s safety and the experience of feeling unsafe in public spaces. The film is built from first-person accounts of walking alone, being watched, blocked, followed, or questioned—often in situations where nothing “technically” happens. It lives in that space where a person is not directly under attack, but is already preparing for one in order to try and stay safe - the tightening of the shoulders, the scanning of exits, the rehearsing of escape routes, the calculations of distance, the phone held in the hand just in case.

The film focuses on how this kind of vigilance is learned early and carried quietly, especially by girls and women. It shows how fear operates as a constant background process, shaping behaviour long before any actual harm occurs.

Awake in the Dark is not about a single incident or a specific perpetrator. It is about living with the knowledge that something could happen, and how that knowledge changes how you move through the world—even when you are technically safe.