TRAUMA BONDED Will Debut At The 19th LA Femme International Film Festival, October 19-22

TRAUMA BONDED, a darkly comedic series written by Chloe Burns and directed by Tori Lane Ross, will debut at the 2023 LA Femme International Film Festival, (LAFIFF) Oct. 19-22 at the Downtown Regal Cinema venue.

In TRAUMA BONDED, we meet dual-personalities Casey and Kate who avoid pain from their past at the expense of their personal relationships until a life-or-death situation forces them to face the unbearable truth if they hope to survive. Also featured in the production along with Burns are Vivian Mei King, Cameron Saffle, and Becki Hayes.

A graduate of the University of Kansas with a degree in Film & Media Studies, Burns wrote, produced, and acted in The Adventures of Botfly, a 6-episode web series that premiered at the 2019 Indie Short Fest and received an Honorable Mention Award at the 2019 Life After Life Films: FEM Fest.

Burns continued to create challenging, dynamic roles for herself but still needed to put her own stamp on how women's trauma reactions are dramatized on film. "Domestic violence survivors are often excluded from trauma-centered media due to triggering scenes and heavy storylines," Burns explains. "That's why as a survivor myself, I wrote something that I could also watch: an escape that could be honest about painful issues I was going through, without losing its sense of humor along the way."

The comedic exploration of controversial storytelling challenges how female trauma is depicted on-screen, making it into a cathartic adventure instead of a triggering ordeal. The way Burns achieved this balancing act was by not casting the role of the abuser, not showing graphic scenes of abuse, and keeping the focus on the character journey of the survivor.

Director Tori Lane Ross is a graduate of UC Berkeley where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Society and Environment, with a concentration in Global Environmental Politics. After college, she began working in the entertainment industry, initially as a casting assistant. A performer since 2008, and a passionate storyteller, she expanded her vision to include directing which allows her to share her artistic perspective more fully.