Get to the bottom of a chilling mystery in Run Rabbit Run as Lionsgate Play adds another must-watch psychological thriller to its roster. Directed by Daina Reid (The Handmaid’s Tale) and Hannah Kent’s (Burial Rights) first original screenplay, Run Rabbit Run follows Sarah (Sarah Snook, Succession), a fertility doctor and a single mother whose life slowly unravels when her 7-year-old daughter Mia (Lily LaTorre, The Clearing) begins to claim that she is Alice, Sarah’s missing sister. As Mia’s behavior grows strange and erratic, she triggers the long-buried ghosts of her mother’s past and opens a haunting Pandora’s box of memories. To save her daughter, Sarah is forced to confront her guilt and trauma once and for all.
In conceptualizing Run Rabbit Run, writer Hannah Kent explored the haunting tragedy of a mother losing her child to the ghost of her past. Talking about her inspiration behind the story, she says, “I’d seen this amazing documentary which focused on children who remembered other families or spoke of previous experiences; and I was always curious about what that would be like as a parent, to have your child start to talk about another mother, another father… It’s about the suffering and the grief that you experience when you lose that connection with your own child, as well as the suffering linked to unresolved parental trauma.”
Talking about how the show puts a spotlight on the challenges and expectations of motherhood, Director Daina Reid says, “Run Rabbit Run is a unique take on the genre by offering a female perspective and exploration of themes such as motherhood, guilt, and the female psyche. Sarah is a working mum. It’s the ground zero of guilt for so many of us. Sarah’s guilt is intensified, by parenting her young daughter Mia on her own. How do you juggle the needs of a child with your need for personal fulfillment and financial security? What is the balance, how do you get it right?”
Reid also shared that the film has garnered support from the Screen Australia Gender Matters initiative and is among the very few feature films to have a female majority for the production’s heads of department.
Catch Run Rabbit Run exclusively streaming on Lionsgate Play starting November 24.