Jess Shannon

Can you clean yourself into a better life?
Can you make great art with a boring boyfriend?
Can mopping tiles spark creativity where there is only chaos?
 
A young artist returns to her childhood home, with a host of degrees and diplomas in her back pocket. But when forced to confront the reality that the world sees no use for her scholarly exploits, she must find a job – and quickly.
 
Overqualified, underemployed and idle, she starts a job as a cleaner for a gallery, where she meets another aspiring artist – Isabella – and they begin a passionate affair. Isabella could not be more different from the cleaner, she’s elegant, successful… and living with her filthy rich boyfriend Paul.
 
Isabella sneaks the cleaner into her life by hiring her to scrub the apartment she shares with Paul. Little by little, the cleaner begins to feel comfortable, to see a way out, to start making art. But when Isabella leaves the apartment one day and doesn’t come back, the cleaner is left to decide whether to go back to her old life, or to take Isabella’s.
 
A surreal, disarming and darkly comedic story about art, identity, and the need for nurture, CLEANER asks what makes us, who makes us, and if we can ever, really, remake ourselves.