Before a moment of extreme compassion and heartbreak, bittersweet memories of Ernest and Angela’s past chart the very depths of their love.

Cristian Solimeno's award winning short film is beautiful, shocking, deeply moving and completely unforgettable. Love follows Ernest (Brett Allen) as he helps his terminally ill wife Angela (Amanda Ray King) to end her life. They are surrounded by sweet and bitter memories of the moments that led them to this awful reality.

By the time I came to write the script for “Love” it had already been living in my head for some years. I had read an article about a man who was being prosecuted for helping his terminally ill sister to die. They had used a plastic bag to suffocate her. As I recall it took twenty seven attempts before she finally passed away. For days afterwards it went through my head over and over. What an act of selfless love on his part! I thought about how they would have discussed it and just what a desperate situation one would have to be in for it to be a good idea. I was haunted by what must have been the unexpectedly protracted nature of the act. Twenty seven attempts. And then the consequences he knew he would have to face. My heart reached out to those two people.

Perhaps the event resonated so strongly for me because it reminded me of a couple I had known well In London; Bruce, who was a charming but sometimes quick‐tempered man was spending his days and nights caring for his terminally ill wife, Anne. She was lovely and had been a great beauty in her youth and was by then suffering with multiple sclerosis. Their story ended differently but no less tragically. I had always wanted to tell a story that was infused with them.

I had the idea of beginning a film with an act of murder and then turning that act on its head as we come to realise its significance for the characters.

I worked to refine and concentrate the flashbacks in to key moments that would tell their story and also give a real sense of who they are and how they love. As I did so, and as the idea of art as life’s great consolation became a theme of the film. I realised that I wanted to use a kind of minimalist approach. Picasso is referenced in the film and as I struggled to purify the film, strip it back and make it more profound, I thought of him often. I thought of him spending all those years coming back to his drawings of the bull. Taking away and taking away until in the end just a few strokes of the pencil were left and yet the essence of all those more complex renderings remained. Behind that cartoonish simplicity he ended up with, you have a feeling of all the years and all the process that sits behind it. I wanted to achieve something like that with this film.
Most of all it is about LOVE. At one point In the film, Ernest is lost in contemplation and Angela is a little concerned about him “What’s wrong?” she asks. He replies that nothing is wrong. He says, “I’ve just never had anyone be as nice to me as you are.”

That is the dream of Love expressed in the film, two people that would do absolutely anything for each other.

No matter the cost.

I hope you like it.