A new three-part independent film series examines the real-world cost of dismissing women’s voices.
Even in the wake of the #MeToo movement and heightened awareness around sexual violence, sexual assault is still one of the most underreported crimes. Although one in four women will experience sexual violence in her lifetime, fewer than 5 percent of these cases ever get reported to the police. In many situations, women fear that the police won’t believe them.
Unfortunately, this fear is well-founded: Even though so few reports of sexual assault make it to the police in the first place, data shows that law enforcement will determine that one in five reported cases is “unfounded” and dismiss it.
There are dire consequences to not believing women. The Cassandra Project, a new trilogy of independent short films spearheaded by filmmaker Barclay DeVeau, hopes to illustrate “the profound consequences that arise when women are not believed and their voices are disregarded and dismissed.”
The project takes its name from the Greek myth of Cassandra, the Trojan princess blessed with the gift of prophecy but cursed so that no one would ever believe her. The ancient myth, unsurprisingly, has overtones of gender-based violence. The god Apollo gives Cassandra her gift of seeing the future when he becomes infatuated with her, but when she refuses his advances, he amends the gift so her prophecies will never be believed.
Not believing Cassandra proves devastating for the Trojans—she predicts the Trojan War, for one thing. (The Trojan War itself—the backstory for The Odyssey and the new Christopher Nolan film—began over men’s coercive control of a woman, Helen of Troy.)
The Cassandra Project’s three short films similarly make the point that not believing women is devastating, not just for the women themselves, but for society at large.
The first film in the series, Busybody, centers on an elderly woman, Florence Jackson (played by Edythe Jason), who witnesses a crime in her sleepy New England town. When she calls the police to report the strange vehicle lurking outside her apartment window—and the adult man she saw arguing with a teenage boy in the street—the only one who believes her is a young woman officer. The rest of the film alternates between Jackson searching for more clues around her small town and the woman police officer trying, unsuccessfully, to convince her male boss to take the report seriously and investigate.
Although Busybody isn’t about a sexual violence case, the gender dynamics are clear. The film shows Jackson—an elderly Black woman—trying desperately to make herself heard, while the danger around her grows. A white man is the apparent attacker: After Jackson spots him with the teenage boy outside the car, the boy disappears, leading Jackson to worry the boy might have ended up in his trunk. However, it’s also a white man in charge at the local police station, where he dismisses Jackson’s concerns and is condescending toward Officer Marquez (Cyndee Rivera), the only person who believes her. The film’s eerie score (by Yvette Janine Jackson) makes it clear what Busybody really is: a horror movie, right up to its harrowing end. And the most horrifying part is that everything in the film can—and does—happen in real life.
Women make up only about 12 percent of police officers in this country, even though research suggests women officers are less likely to use excessive force and draw firearms and are less likely than their male counterparts to receive complaints from their community. Busybody doesn’t specify whether any other officers in the local police department are women, but based on the national statistics, it’s very possible Officer Marquez is the only one. Despite the prevalence of sexual assault, domestic violence and other crimes that disproportionately affect women, women rarely see themselves represented in their local law enforcement, which often creates yet one more barrier discouraging women from coming forward with allegations.
In Busybody, the central crime is never resolved because it’s never believed, with the lone exception of Officer Marquez. At the same time, her character implies that having women police officers is not enough if they’re not even believed at the professional level. By the end of the film, a suspicious car is still driving around town, since the two women concerned about it have been ignored. And, as a result, who knows how many tragedies are still in store for this community?
Busybody, which made its festival debut in 2024, will be featured in a fundraiser and private screening in Nashville on Sept. 24, 2026. The other two films in The Cassandra Project’s trilogy, Hour 80 and The Keeper of the Lighthouse, are currently in pre-production.
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