Hello everyone. My name is Halina Reijn and I am the writer-director of 'Babygirl'. So the story of this film is about a woman who seems to have it all: a beautiful family, a great husband and a great job. She runs her own robotics company. Yet she is attracted to her male intern, a very forbidden relationship: “Oh, you are here.” – who will dominate her sexually. And this is their first long meeting in a hotel room. And she sits there all alone waiting for him. She's all dressed up. And then he comes in underdressed, with a hood on and a plastic bag from some bodega. And the first thing he says is, “Oh, you're here.” So he's not even impressed by the fact that she's there. “It's… What you're doing is wrong.” Of course that is also a power play. This entire film is about power, control, surrender. And this scene in particular is very much about the power dynamics between our main characters. And what's really important to me about this scene is that the scene is a performance within a performance. The entire film is about performance. The whole film is about theatre. It starts with a fake orgasm. It ends with a real orgasm. That's why we constantly ask the public what is real and what is fake. And is it possible to become our authentic self? And what exactly does that mean? “I don't really know how. What do you want from me? Because you show up here. You don't know me. I'm a stranger, dressed like this. Do you expect me to just look at you and do nothing? For this scene specifically, we really asked the actors to show themselves performing. “Get on your knees.” “No, what?” “Now get on your knees.” “I'm, no!” So they're constantly going in and out of character. And you can see Harris Dickinson, who plays this young intern. He really experiments with what masculinity is. Who may I be as a man one day and an age of consent. What can I do? How can I remain respectful and still dominate this woman, which he clearly asks for. “I think I have power over you because I can make one call and you lose everything.” And yet we see this woman who has so much power and especially over this intern, but she chooses to be demoted by him. And why am I doing this, for me? Why am I telling this story? It's because I believe that total freedom and actual liberation means connecting with our inner, animal side. The moment we start to suppress the animal and we say: no, I don't have an animal, I will do Botox. I sit in ice baths. I'm going to sit in oxygen chambers and do all the therapy I can think of to create this perfect image of my identity, and then everyone will love me. That is of course a mistake. “No, I don't like that. Not like that, not like that, I don't like that. I don't want it that way. My film is a cautionary tale about what happens when you deny that you have a dark side within yourself. Stop! Open your eyes, please