Behind the Mask is a movie about healing estrangement and letting go of the past to create a better future. Cora is a brilliant Shakespeare scholar in her thirties who is held back by her resentment towards her dying, celebrity-actor father, Michael – think Laurence Olivier with a touch of Al Pacino. Cora returns to her childhood home after years of estrangement and confronts Michael on his deathbed, hoping to make peace and find closure with this man who always let her down. Michael is too incoherent for the conversation that she needs, but when he hands her a strange theatrical mask, she travels back in time to 1977, backstage to the Shakespeare performance that launched his career. Cora, dazzled by her father’s charisma, talent and youth, is swept up to the mysterious, exciting and strange world behind the curtain. She seizes the opportunity to win his love and prove her worth by connecting with him through the thing he always put before her: his career. 

 

Yet as Cora is swept up into the mysterious, strange and exciting world behind the curtain, Cora struggles with her vulnerability. She comes face to face with the darkest demons of show business – and her deepest wounds about her father’s longstanding pattern of neglect. Barely escaping the clutches of a predator, her deepest-held wounds come pouring forward: why did you never protect me? Why could you never put me first? Cora and Michael reckon with their difficult relationship and his legacy – pathing the path to a better future, if they can both learn from the past. 

 

When Cora uses the mask to return to present day, she finds her father fundamentally transformed: he has lived a better life, prioritizing family and love, which — in turn — has transformed her life and embraced the suppressed creativity. While Cora still lives with her painful memories from the original timeline, seeing Michael’s wholehearted decades of transformation inspires her to begin to release her resentment and take the first step towards forgiveness. Together, they turn to the page, with Cora hopeful that their next and final chapter will mark a new beginning.