The success of The Last of Us definitively launched the career of Bella Ramsey , already known to the general public thanks to Game of Thrones :
it is therefore no wonder that ALTER , a platform dedicated to new horror cinema talents, took advantage of it to share on YouTube a short film shot in 2020 by the young English actress.
Entitled Requiem , the short is directed by Em J. Gilbertson and written by Laura Jayne Tunbridge , who made it as a graduation project at the National Film and Television School . We are undoubtedly close to the atmospheres of folk horror, even if Requiem focuses more on drama: in England in 1605, while women accused of witchcraft are burned at the stake, between Evelyn ( Bella Ramsey ) and Mary ( Safia Oakley Green ) a secret romance that threatens to attract the attention of Minister Gilbert ( Simon Bacon ), father ofEvelyn .
The story is very linear, devoid of real surprises, but reveals a significant parallel between the oppression of the past and that of the present; not surprisingly, Gilbertson was inspired by her individual experience as a queer person growing up in Liverpool, where her identity and independence were not always accepted. Speaking to Rocksblogs , the director said:
One of our initial goals was to create a witch trials project that revolved around women/people who were assigned female gender at birth. One of the themes we explore in Requiem is the struggle for the autonomy of the body, an issue that is still very important today. Gender roles are something I explored in my previous work, Crashing Waves , and I’ve always found them completely absurd. Naturally many of our conversations about our experiences as queer people went into script.
The cast also includes Sean Buchanan, Jack Oliver Norris, Juliet Dante, Jason Adam and Jack Condon . The producer is Michelle Brøndum , while the excellent cinematography is the work of Joseph Guy .