the letter.
Making a Christmas film has been on my list for a long time. At the end of 2024, the stars aligned. A small group of talented collaborators, one day on set and the creative freedom to finally make it happen.
The film found its audience organically, accumulating over 13,000 views on YouTube. What's stayed with me most though isn't the numbers, it's the messages. People reaching out to share their own stories, moved by something they saw from the film and could relate to.
Conceptualisation & Creative Development
The idea had been sitting with me for a while. Christmas films tend to reach for the spectacular, but the ones that stay with you are usually about something much quieter. A moment of courage. A relationship on the mend. Something true.
The brief I gave myself was simple: write a story that feels universal enough for anyone to find themselves in it, but specific enough to feel real. The theme of reconciliation felt right, it's something Christmas has always carried, even when we don't talk about it in those terms. The letter as a device gave us a way into the old man's inner world without ever needing him to explain himself. We just needed to believe him.
shoot planning
One day. One location. A small group of people who trusted the idea and gave their time freely.
With no budget and a single shooting day, every setup had to count. The shoot was stripped back to essentials, the performance, the light and the details that told the story without dialogue. The constraints, as they so often do, turned out to be the making of it.