18 Mag An interview with Natalie Jenq and Charlene Soo, director and composer of “Forget Me Not”
BIO
Natalie Jenq is a Los Angeles–based filmmaker, actor, and visual storyteller. She began her career in front of the camera, appearing in a range of short films, and has since expanded into directing and cinematography, developing a multidisciplinary approach to storytelling.
Her filmography spans independent shorts across genres, including work as a producer on How I Died (And Lived to Tell the Tale) and Lí, as well as serving as production designer on a 1930s Old Hollywood–inspired Stark Special short film, Lavender. Her work often reflects a strong visual sensibility shaped by her background in photography and art.
She has also gained industry experience with NBCUniversal and Universal Pictures, and is currently developing her debut EP as a singer-songwriter, extending her storytelling into music. Her latest project, Forget Me Not, continues her focus on intimate, character-driven narratives.
BIO
Charlene Soo is a media composer and singer-songwriter from Singapore, based in Los Angeles. Her melodic, theme-driven approach to orchestral and electronic scoring has earned her recognition in international competitions, including finalist placements at the Music+Sound Awards, ScoreLive London, and the European Recording Orchestra Call for Scores.
Her recent projects include the original soundtrack for Aftershock, a space documentary featuring the highest and fastest civilian-built rocket, directed by Collin Nelson and co-composed with Andreu Diport. The score was recorded in Budapest with a 59-piece orchestra and studio musicians in Los Angeles, and has since received international accolades and a Music+Sound Award nomination. She also composed the score for the upcoming feature Meeting Marsha, directed by McKenzie Goodwin and starring Elaine Hendrix. In addition, she is part of the music department for Honor of Kings, contributing to one of the world’s leading AAA game franchises.
Charlene’s music has been recorded by AFM musicians in iconic stages including Warner Bros. and Evergreen Studios, and performed internationally in venues like the Tung Auditorium. Drawing inspiration from composers like John Williams, Ennio Morricone, Maurice Ravel, and Hildur Guðnadóttir, her work spans film, games, and interactive media.
A graduate of the University of Southern California’s Screen Scoring master’s program, Charlene also holds a joint honours degree in Music and Communication from the University of Liverpool, and previously studied Electronic Music and Sound Design at the University of Western Australia. With experience across four continents, she brings a global perspective and a deep commitment to storytelling through music
The premise of using a chemical agent to obliterate grief is a chilling reflection on our own society’s aversion to emotional suffering. How did you approach visualizing this intersection between a cold, dystopian macrocosm and the deeply intimate, fragile microcosm of a young woman’s mourning?
NJ: I approached the film by thinking about contrast, not just visually, but emotionally. On a macro level, the “perfect world” is cold and controlled, built around the idea that grief is something to be erased.
As a person and an artist, I’ve always been drawn to color, both its presence and its absence. In this film, I used color very intentionally to express that divide. The real world is lit more warmly, because even in grief there is still love, connection, and the ability to feel deeply. In contrast, the “perfect world” is colder, with more artificial hues, to suggest something manufactured – a version of life where emotion has been stripped away and replaced with something inauthentic.
For me, that artificiality was important. I wanted it to feel like a space where the absence of grief doesn’t equal peace, but rather a loss of something fundamentally human. That fakeness becomes a way of suppressing our innate ability to connect with others.
I’m deeply interested in telling stories that highlight our capacity to connect with one another, and I see grief as a reflection of that. It exists because we love. So creating a world without grief isn’t really creating something better, it’s removing one of the most meaningful parts of being alive. Ultimately, the film is less about escaping grief and more about honoring it as a necessary part of love and connection.
Film scores traditionally serve to heighten emotional resonance, but the core narrative of Forget Me Not revolves around the artificial suppression of feeling. How did you conceptually and musically translate this emotional void, and how does the sonic landscape fracture as the drug’s insidious consequences begin to emerge?
CS: Forget Me Not features a hybrid electroacoustic approach, and the score closely follows Sona’s perspective. As the consequences of the drug begin to emerge, the acoustic elements – particularly the violin and cello, which represent the more human and emotional side of the narrative – gradually become more unstable and volatile, with the melodic material starting to unravel and feel increasingly randomised. This shift reflects Sona’s internal state, as her sense of self and emotional clarity begin to deteriorate under the influence of the drug.
We also explored darker, more textural possibilities with the violin and cello, improvising a range of extended techniques and textures during the recording session to create a distinctive sonic palette that reflects Sona stepping into an increasingly unknown and unsettling world.
By attempting to erase her pain, Sona inevitably risks erasing the foundational memories of her grandmother. Can you speak to the film’s philosophical stance on how our traumas and our grief are ultimately essential in anchoring our identity and our humanity?
NJ: At the heart of the film is the dilemma between the desire to be free of pain versus the risk of losing the very experiences that make us who we are. Sona’s attempt to erase her grief isn’t just about relief. It brings up the question of whether or not our identity can survive the removal of its most formative memories.
Philosophically, the film leans into the idea that identity is not a clean, curated collection of pleasant moments, but rather a lived narrative shaped by what has marked us most deeply. To me, grief, in particular, is inseparable from love. It testifies to the depth of a relationship. To remove that pain is, in a way, thinning out the meaning of that bond. In Sona’s case, her grandmother doesn’t just exist as a figure in memory, but as someone whose presence is carried through loss and emotional imprint.I wanted to show that our humanity is tied to our vulnerability. To grieve is to acknowledge that we are affected by others, and that we are not self-contained. That openness is what makes relationships real and enduring. If you strip away the pain entirely, you risk creating a version of the self that is maybe more stable, but also less connected and less human.
At the same time, the film isn’t arguing that suffering is inherently good or should be preserved for its own sake. It’s more interested in the idea that meaning comes from integration, not erasure. Trauma and grief are not valuable because they hurt, but because they demand to be woven into the story of who we are. To erase them may promise relief, but it also risks detaching the self from the very relationships and meanings that give it substance.
In a contemporary reality that often pathologizes sadness and promotes toxic positivity or quick chemical fixes, Forget Me Not feels like a poignant cautionary tale. What specific conversation do you hope the film ignites regarding the painful, yet absolute necessity, of truly sitting with one’s grief?
NJ: I think the film is trying to gently push back against the idea that sadness is something that needs to be fixed as quickly as possible. We live in a culture that often treats grief like a problem to solve, something to medicate, bypass, or reframe into something more “productive.” But grief doesn’t really work that way.
What I hope the film opens up is a conversation around allowing grief to take its natural course, to be felt, rather than managed away. Sitting with it can be uncomfortable and slow, but it’s also how we process loss and stay connected to what we’ve lost. If we rush to erase or numb it, we might get temporary relief, but we also risk cutting ourselves off from the depth of those relationships and what they meant to us.
For me, it really comes from this deep love of being human. We get to feel so much, and I think that’s incredible. Even the hard emotions, like grief, are part of that. They’re not glitches in the system, they’re proof that we’re alive, that we’ve loved, and that we’ve impacted each other.
Did you establish specific musical motifs or instrumentation to differentiate the organic, lingering warmth of the grandmother’s memory from the synthetic, dystopian numbness induced by the drug? How do these two contrasting auditory worlds collide throughout the film?
CS: For this film, I developed a sonic landscape that reflects the complexity of both its technological and human themes, using a hybrid electroacoustic approach. The electronic elements – pads and synths – represent the “tech” side of the narrative and the artificial suppression of emotion, often feeling controlled, static, and restrained. In contrast, we recorded live violin and cello to embody the human element, bringing warmth, fragility, and emotional depth into the score. The cello also represents Ahma and carries her theme at the end of the film.
What are you currently working on?
Cs: I’m currently working on a few features that I can’t say much about yet, but I’m really excited about them!
NJ: I’m currently working on completing my album and I’m also fortunate to have three producing projects lined up this year. All of them are centered on the human experience and carry a social impact at their core. That’s really important to me – telling stories that don’t just entertain, but actually connect people and spark something in them.