When panic attacks _{by Sam Hollis}

In 2013, writer-director Michelle Savill was about to board a plane to attend the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in France. Just one little snag… the flight had left 24 hours beforehand. She didn’t have the $3000 cash needed to book another one, and although an employee helped her onto a plane the following day, the panic was real.

Once the dust settled, Savill found friends and family had experienced similarly mortifying moments. Millie Lies Low, her debut feature co-written with Eli Kent, places its titular character in the same circumstance, but cranks the anxiety up to 11. When a panic attack causes Millie, played by Ana Scotney, to miss her flight to New York to undertake a prestigious scholarship, she decides to fake it till she makes it – posting Photoshopped images to Instagram, hastily throwing a New York map on the wall behind her whenever a friend attempts to FaceTime.

Savill wrote vulnerably, and as a result, sees much of herself in Millie.

“It is something that I do deal with: anxiety, existential dread, worry about the future, focusing on past mistakes a bit too much,” Savill says. “Those are universal feelings that were both specific to me, which I could write about having experienced them, but also I know they’re felt by so many of my friends and family.”

Millie Lies Low was shot in Wellington Central. It will screen at The Embassy Theatre on the 6^th of November, Penthouse Cinema & Café on the 8^th, and Light House Petone on the 18^th as part of the Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival. Savill hopes audiences “feel hugged” when it premieres.

“We’re all human and we’re all a bit f****d up, and that’s okay… I hope that the audience can feel seen and heard and go away knowing that they’re not alone.”