12th House, 13min., USA
Directed by Ilona Laboy
12th House is a surreal meditation on grief, identity, and spiritual transformation. After losing her husband, a woman descends into a liminal dreamworld where memory fragments and archetypes guide her inward. Haunted by illusion and tethered to love, she confronts her shadow through symbolic rituals of self-loss and rebirth. Blending myth, psychology, and visual poetry, 12th House explores the sacred undoing required to become whole—and the alchemy of carrying love beyond death.

https://instagram.com/illusionoffamellc

Get to know the filmmaker:

1. What motivated you to make this film?

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Initially, my late husband and I shared a dream of creating films
together, to build a life doing what we love. After losing him, this
project became my way of keeping that dream alive. Israel has been my
motivation throughout this entire process. Finishing this film was a way to
carry him forward, to honor his legacy, and to keep him present in
everything I do.

2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you to
make this film?

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The new storyline and the entire post-production process took a little
over four months. It was an intense, concentrated period of rebuilding,
editing, and reshaping the film into what it is now.

3. How would you describe your film in two words!?

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Dream Shattering

4. What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film?

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Losing my husband and having to finish without him. It was the heaviest
emotional challenge of my life, trying to create through grief, while the
person this film was meant to be made with was no longer here.

5. What were your initial reactions when watching the audience talking
about your film in the feedback video?

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It was powerful to watch real audience reactions. Their responses were
exactly what I hoped for, the speechlessness, the impact, the inability to
categorize what they’d just seen. I wanted the film to feel immersive and
unsettling in a way that lingers. Hearing people say it stayed with them
and sparked conversation meant everything to me.

6. When did you realize that you wanted to make films?

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I think I always knew on some subconscious level. Growing up, I would
enter creative contests and cast myself in every role simply because I had
no one else, so I learned to create everything myself. Later, films
like Requiem
for a Dream shattered me in a way that made me think, “I want to make
people feel something this deeply.” I was also obsessed with
transformations, the characters, the voices, which made me realize how much
I loved performance and creative direction. All of that eventually merged
into filmmaking.

7. What film have you seen the most in your life?

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It's hard to pick one, because I revisit films for different moods and
reasons. But I’d probably say King of New York. I can watch Christopher
Walken as Frank White endlessly, he’s great. I also really loved rewatching
Suspiria (2018) many times.

8. What other elements of the festival experience can we and other
festivals implement to satisfy you and help you further your filmmaking
career?

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I’m a filmmaker who built everything from scratch with my late husband,
with a skeleton team and no industry safety net. What festivals can do to
support artists like us is to give us continuity beyond the screening.
Industry matchmaking to connect emerging filmmakers with distributors,
curators, galleries, or labs that actually showcase experimental cinema.
Opportunities for continued artistic development, like residencies, grants,
or partnerships with VFX houses, post studios, or cinematography labs.

9. You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway. How has your experiences
been working on the festival platform site?

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Very smooth and organized. FilmFreeway has been a great platform for
submitting my work.

10. What is your favorite meal?

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Wagyu steak, cornichon pickles, dessert: affogato (with vanilla bean ice
cream).

11. What is next for you? A new film?

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I’m currently developing the feature-length version of 12th House.
There’s so much unreleased footage to shape into a larger narrative. I also
have a list of projects that Israel and I planned to make together, and
once the feature is complete, it would mean everything to bring those to
life.