Not quite a documentary is the strictest sense, Corrupted is based on the real life experiences of a number of psychiatric patients with the effects of electroshock therapy and the resulting memory loss.
The unnamed protagonist of this short film is an amalgam of several of these patients whose sad story unfolds through voiceovers as she comes to terms with the fact that there are things in her life she’ll never remember. She sometimes wakes up not knowing where she is or what time it is. She often feels lonely and detached from her life, and she struggles to recall events from her childhood. Pictures with the faces blacked out and images onscreen becoming semi-pixellated make for effective visual metaphors, illustrating what this must feel like for her.
Memory is a precious thing. In some cases it can also be a tenuous and all too fragile thing. Corrupted is a brief yet poignant portrait of what can happen when one’s memories become just that – corrupted.