Nocturne in Dissonance

The Story

Claire is a woman caught between two lives. She lives in New York City with a boyfriend she loves, but she feels stuck in a steady yet monotonous job and dreams of travelling the world as a journalist. When she’s given the opportunity to make this dream a reality, she takes it… without telling her boyfriend.

Noah has worked his whole life to get where he is right now. He has always dreamed of building a life in New York City with his girlfriend and dream job. Now that he has everything he ever wanted, he’s caught off guard when he discovers it is not what his girlfriend wants.

Over the course of a tense anniversary dinner, the two are confronted with an impossible choice: to decide between career and love.

Comps & Tone

Inspired by movies like Before Sunrise, Marriage Story, and The Worst Person in the World, this short film aims to capture a sense of realism. We want the movie to feel almost like people watching, like you are a fly on the wall watching these two have a conversation. A slice-of-life character study that should feel more like a documentary than strictly a narrative-driven piece.

Characters

Claire - Ambitious, smart, and determined. Claire's aspirations are something as central to her identity as her name. She never saw herself in such an all encompassing relationship so young. Though she continues to have her own personal ambitions, she looks around at her life now and feels that she has to settle for compromises and struggles to balance autonomy and togetherness in her relationship. When given the opportunity to take her dream job abroad, she feels a responsibility to herself to take it.

Noah - Charming, methodical, and idealistic, his well-thought-out plans for his life have played out exactly how he imagined them. He’s the type of person who truly believes that you can achieve anything through planning and hard work alone. With that being said, his optimism and naivety sometimes blinds him to the feelings of the people around him. Though he truly loves Claire, her decision to go abroad comes as a complete shock to him; suddenly the idealistic image of his future begins to crash down.

A Little About the Director

Laura Sessi-Knott has been passionate about film since she was eleven making video projects for her elementary school. Now in 2025, she’s pursuing filmmaking at Boston University. Having primarily focused on Producing, this is her first foray into Directing and she could not be more thrilled!

She came up with the early ideas for this movie around two years ago and has worked hard over that time to develop the story into something that not only resonates with her, but with others as well. So far, she has enjoyed the collaborative nature of directing and the opportunity to work creatively with several different departments. She can’t wait till people can see the final product and is confident it will be something special.

Where Your Money is Going

This short film has a fairly lean budget with a majority of the money being raised going towards food for the people on set and production design. Additionally, the money will go towards quality gear and festival submissions. We have tried our best to save money wherever possible to make sure any little bit that you can donate to our movie counts!