Virtuoso — A Female-Driven Horror Film
A delicious, dark reimagining of the classical music world. A fever dream of first-night nerves. A woman who dares to be ruthless to achieve creative freedom.
VIRTUOSO is an unashamed horror film about a woman who uses wild, unwieldy violence as the catalyst behind her creative emancipation. Directed by Stella Scott. Support it. It matters.
Female filmmakers need your support to take creative risks and tell dark stories.
VIRTUOSO is a film that is unashamed in its ambition to portray violent and uncompromising women on screen. This is something to which there has always been a resistance. But we know there is an audience out there who are eager for these stories to be told, who don't need their female characters to be nice to be worth watching.
Female characters in the revenge genre tend to be chokingly restrictive: either passive women who exist to serve a male story, or victims seeking retribution for sexual abuse. In VIRTUOSO, Josephine serves no one but herself. From FATAL ATTRACTION to THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE, women in revenge narratives are depicted as 'psychotic' or 'mad'. Rarely is a woman given such agency — a film in which a woman uses violence as the catalyst behind her creative emancipation.
We hope you will join us in making an alternative female narrative — one which moves the goalposts and pushes the audience to see female creativity in a new light.
I want to thank Stella Scott for sharing this with me and for trusting this platform to get the word out there.
Horror is a film genre that hasn't traditionally been associated with female directors. We hope you, our readers, can help us change that. Stella Scott — whom we've had the privilege of featuring here before — is making something genuinely important with VIRTUOSO. An industry that plays it safe with the opportunities it provides to women needs audiences like ours to demand more. This is one of those moments.
Josephine, an ambitious piano player, sets a curse on herself that prevents her from performing and her tutor boyfriend from helping her. She auditions to play piano for a prestigious orchestra. Her partner Jasper, a fellow pianist, helps her prepare. Self-defeating, she sets in motion something she cannot easily undo.
As an aspiring pianist, she feels she has to destroy the menace that lurks around her sense of self in order to perform. The pressure from her teacher builds. And so, like an exorcism of sorts, she summons and releases the deep-rooted and unruly monster she truly believes herself to be — to make way for a new state of autonomy and possibility.
"VIRTUOSO has been my passion project for two years. On the surface, it's a familiar narrative — the suffocating mentor who thwarts his student's ambitions. But what makes VIRTUOSO different is its determination to sensationalise this dynamic and narrative, to discover the truth that lies beneath the extreme.
I love the theatre and melodrama of films like Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA and Peter Greenaway's THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER. These films are intrepid and uncompromising. VIRTUOSO won't shy away from the theatre of the classical music world: instead, it will embrace it."
It was key that the central device challenged the expectations we felt as women to behave a certain way when searching for artistic development.
Stella Scott — on the film's central spell
Victoria Rigby is a writer and actress from Lincolnshire. She studied English at Cambridge and is represented by Independent Talent. Her play GIRL FROM NOWHERE made its US debut in New York, following acclaimed five-star runs at Theatre503, the Pleasance Edinburgh and London's Other Palace. She is developing the TV pilot QUEEN OF CLUBS with director Whitney Mosery (HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD; KING CHARLES III), and was shortlisted for iFeatures with Stella Scott for GRACE. She studies playwriting at the Lyric course led by Duncan Macmillan and Simon Stephens — and trains as a singer, and plays piano and viola. VIRTUOSO is partly inspired by her own experiences of the classical music world.
Support VIRTUOSO on Kickstarter. Female filmmakers need horror fans, cinephiles and film lovers who want to see more films made by women.
Back Virtuoso on Kickstarter →We have been a part of this change — using social media to expose the works of some of the most inspiring artists in the world and putting you, the reader, in touch with them directly. There is no need for only a few people in a flawed system to dictate what artists can and cannot be exposed to. Today it is more important than ever to preserve the artist's perspective. Because artists are. ✦
My career has never moved in a straight line, and that has always been the point. It began in fashion with a formative chapter at Vogue Italia, followed by an unlikely detour into finance. From there, film, PR, events and production. A role as Director at Wilhelmina Models in Dubai sharpened an eye already trained on people worth watching. Then came the years that shaped the platform: writing, editing, producing photo shoots, a short-lived photobooth business, lots of yoga and eventually Madrid, where the light is just right. Currently in the States in a new and exciting field — digital marketing for higher ed — but this remains my passion project. What started as a hobby back in 2003 evolved into Antakly Projects, leading to some exciting conversations, projects, and lots of joy. Throughout all of it, my best friend, one small white Shih-poo called Coco, has been present, unimpressed, and very fluffy.