The Slate
Menu
← Back to The Slate

A short film by Illahi Rayani

In Vain

A burnt-out actor surrenders to the beast inside her one more time during a career-defining audition.

Support this film

Body horror. Contains blood, sustained psychological distress, and a graphic sequence of audition preparation.

Concept trailer

In Vain hasn't been shot yet. Everything on this page comes from a concept shoot made to work out how the film should look and sound, which is the part that convinces people it's worth paying for. What's left is the money to make the actual thing.

Synopsis

In Vain poster, the Actor's back under hard red light.

After a failed audition, a burnt-out ACTOR staggers through a punishing day. An unpaid parking ticket, an empty bank account, a call to her unsupportive parents, and a shift at a busy restaurant. Nothing about this life is working.

Beneath it all, The Actor's body begins fighting to surface something she has been trying to keep buried: her hunger for the craft.

Pounding heartbeats. Sharp ringing. Trickles of blood.

The beast within her strains against its limits, demanding release, and it's only a matter of time before she surrenders to it.

Written and directed by Illahi Rayani

Concept stills

The Actor outdoors in daylight, looking down at her phone as her face falls.The Actor outdoors with the phone to her ear, looking away past the camera.The Actor on a phone call outside a brick building, mid-argument.The Actor on the phone against a brick wall, caught mid-sentence.A camcorder monitor showing the Actor recording an audition for herself.The Actor holding her script pages against a lit backdrop, mid-take.The Actor kneeling on her bed at night, marking up script pages across the duvet.The Actor face down on a bed, script pages scattered across her back.The Actor face down, her bare back and shoulders washed in hard red light.Extreme close-up of the Actor's eyes, wet and lit hard red.The Actor lying back under hard red light, throat exposed.The Actor reading a page by lamplight, reflected in a mirror.

← swipe / scroll →

Cast

Rojan Molanian, who plays The Actor

Rojan Molanian

The Actor

The Handmaid's Tale · The Expanse · Hell Motel

Rojan Molanian is a Toronto-based actress trained at Seneca College, who has continued to refine her craft through ongoing study with leading studios across the city. Her screenwork includes appearances in acclaimed series such as The Handmaid's Tale (HBO), The Expanse (Amazon Prime), and Slasher: Hell Motel (AMC+). Her performance in the 2019 shortfilm Toward You earned her the Best Actress Award at the Vancouver Short Film Festival.

Drawn to deeply human stories with psychological and thriller elements, Molanian is known for her ability to inhabit powerful emotional landscapes with authenticity, bringing a grounded intensity and subtle surrealism to her work. She is passionate about character-driven storytelling that explores vulnerability, transformation, and the unseen inner worlds of her characters.

Director

Illahi Rayani, who plays Writer & Director

Illahi Rayani

Writer & Director

Under the Bridge (Hulu) · The Expanse (Amazon) · NYU Tisch, Meisner Studio

Illahi Rayani is a Toronto-based actor and writer, and a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, where she trained at the Meisner Studio. She has appeared in Under the Bridge (Hulu), The Expanse (Amazon), and a range of short films created in collaboration with friends and fellow emerging artists.

IN VAIN marks her first solo venture as a writer and director. The process has been both empowering and creatively expansive, pushing her to take greater ownership of her artistry and approach storytelling from a new perspective. With this growing sense of agency, Illahi hopes to carve out space for stories that live at the intersection of identity, belonging, and emotional truth.

Director’s statement

In Vain is deeply personal. While it is not a direct retelling of my own experiences, everything the actor represents reflects how I feel as an artist.

I have been working as an actor in Toronto for the past five years. When the work is good, it is the closest thing I have to transcendence. It is the only place I have ever felt fully present, fully myself, and fully outside myself at the same time. That feeling is the reason I started, and it is the reason I have not been able to stop.

But those moments are rare, and the industry rations them. The creative hunger that drove me was no longer being satisfied by the audition process alone.

This film grew out of that tension. It is an exploration of the obsessive need to create, and the physical and emotional cost of devotion to a craft that this industry does not always make room for. The body-horror elements are not meant to sensationalize suffering, but to externalize an internal reality that many artists quietly live with.

While the film functions as a personal catharsis, it is also intended as a gesture of recognition toward other artists navigating an industry increasingly shaped by economics, productivity, and visibility. In a system that often prioritizes output over expression, many creatives are left carrying a constant hunger to give more than they are allowed to.

At its core, this film is a love letter to actors, artists, and anyone who feels the cosmic drive to create not out of ambition, but necessity.

— Illahi Rayani

Extreme close-up of the Actor's eyes, wet and lit hard red.
Status
Script finished
Genre
Psychological body horror
Written & directed
Illahi Rayani

Development

  1. Script
  2. Fundingnow
  3. Getting ready
  4. Filming
  5. Editing
  6. Premiere
Now Funding

Help make this one

Money goes to places to film, to paying the crew, and to the editing and sound work afterwards. None of it comes from a grant or a studio, so whether this one gets made depends entirely on how many people decide they want it.

$1,000 of $20,000

Design prototype: no campaign is open and this button is not wired up yet.