'When It Melts' Director Veerle Baetens Explains Why Uncomfortable Films Are Needed Now – '[Life's] Not All Disney'

Best known for playing a bluegrass-singing mother with an ill daughter in the Oscar-nominated "The Broken Circle Breakdown" and a

relentless cop on the television show "Code 37," actress Veerle Baetens donned a director's cap for her feature debut "When it Melts." Based on Lize Spit's novel "The

Melting," the film premiered in this year's Sundance World Feature Competition. The actress-turned director and Rosa Marchant — who plays the film's protagonist in her childhood

years — joined Sharon Waxman to discuss the picture's unflinching, uncompromising look at the lingering impact of childhood trauma with TheWrap's Portrait and Video Studio at The

Music Lodge. Explaining the film's cryptic title, Baetens argued it's about how the protagonist isolates herself after a childhood incident, and how such trauma makes her a

frozen person. "It's a beautiful metaphor for people who have experienced trauma to be in a frozen state of mind, to just live but not really live." 17-year-old Marchant,

whom Waxman acknowledged looked a bit younger ("It gives you the opportunity to play younger parts") claims she was unfazed by the dark and potentially grueling subject matter,

and that she read the original novel even before she auditioned. "It's also just an important story to tell," Marchant stated. "It's very universal." Marchant stated she

had peers who had already seen the film and gave it a proverbial thumbs-up. It was, to quote Marchant sharing her friend's reaction, "so recognizable to her and … how it is to be

a girl right now."