Shattered Faces

Ariane Hahusseau, Writer 

Sloan Grant(s) Received: 2021, Sloan TV Pilot Award, American Film Institute 

Project Type: TV Pilot 

Genre: Historical Drama 

Length: 58 pages 

Field of Science: Biology, Engineering 

Stage: Development 

Synopsis 

War-torn Paris, 1917. After swearing to never touch a brush again, a tortured painter volunteers at the American Hospital where she witnesses, powerlessly, the surgeons’ struggle to reconstruct some soldiers’ atrociously mutilated faces with rudimentary graft techniques. When she’s asked to join the Studio for Portrait Masks where a group of sculptors cast and paint prosthetic masks for the gueules cassées, she accepts. Maybe helping these shattered faces retrieve their humanity, she will learn to forgive herself and live anew among the colorful bohemia of Montmartre.