Hi! My name is Rita Avellar. I'm from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and a US resident since 2015. But my story with the US goes back to 1994 when I was an exchange student in South Bend, Indiana. The Fat Lady is my first project as a filmmaker. Writing and telling stories that make us think and touch us somehow is not something new to me. Since the first time I learned how to read and write, I wanted to create. Create stories, poems, and ideas, and share something through words and imagination. When I think about my entire life, I always associate it with being creative and, it was that creativity that led to different professional paths which sabotaged me to follow my true path. The Fat Lady short film is based on a short story I created in 2013 when studying Creative Writing at UCSD in San Diego, California. This short story was selected as one of the best among other stories and being the only immigrant and Latina woman in the class, that was a surprise. Because of this story, I was invited to be part of a writers' group in San Diego and it made me think how amazing this story would be on screen as a short film. After 7 years with this idea locked in a drawer, I decided to put this idea into action. The Fat Lady is going to shake the world!

The Fat Lady - The film is a fable of how society is getting sick for not understanding and accepting differences, not helping, and not looking at others, and also aims to bring awareness about the importance of mental health. At the same time, it's a drama-comedy, since it uses elements of sarcasm to bring important and touchy topics that need to be addressed. I believe that art can change the world. Could be through a book, film, play, painting, or poem. It doesn't matter the media chosen, but how we expose ideas and make us think.

This story can impact a lot of people, especially women. The same way that impacted 20 people who read it for the first time when it was a short story. A story that can also impact the international audience, since the main theme is universal. The main character in the story feels invisible to society and does not see that there are other differences as well, even around her. She just wanted to be recognized, to be called by her name and not nicknames about her appearance. This comes from her mother who made her believe that her body with more volume was inappropriate and she was increasingly justified by eating compulsively since it brought comfort and pleasure at the same time. She sees other fat women who are proud of their bodies on social media, but she can't identify with them. The audience can identify with the story with several points. As the person who is constantly bullied or as the person who does the aggression. There are different views on this theme about difference and how society sees itself. The symbol is the fat woman, but it could be racial discrimination, homophobia, or machismo. It is only a symbol and not the question of fat itself. The idea behind is to provoke, to make us think about it.