Director’s Statement

Things Between Heaven and Earth

The film begins in a theatre in Vienna, where a writer speaks publicly about his latest book. His words are rehearsed, precise, at times self-protective. What he says is not always sincere but performative, a way of controlling his story before others can. In counterpoint, he walks silently into a church in London, urged by his interviewer to meet his estranged father.

The encounter never takes place. What unfolds is not reconciliation or healing, but waiting. Between the polished words of public speech and the weight of private silence, the man confronts memory, faith, and the absence of both.

The book he has just published shares the film’s title: Things Between Heaven and Earth. In that novel, its characters hover between belief and its absence, between meaning and meaninglessness. The man is no different. He wanders through a kind of purgatory, caught between the father he once feared and the God who no longer answers.

The film unfolds across two registers. In one, he is articulate and composed before an audience. In the other, he waits alone in silence. These threads do not explain each other, nor do they resolve. They reverberate like echoes, one spoken, the other endured. Between them lingers the question of faith, not as doctrine but as silence.

In the final moments, the man senses a presence. He looks up, searching for something beyond himself. Instead, he finds only his own shadow, fractured and still. Yet he leaves the candle burning. That act, modest but deliberate, does not bring resolution but an uneasy recognition of a longing that refuses to fade.

I am drawn to dialogue that is exacting yet unstable, language that seems to hold authority yet slips through contradiction. My characters often reveal themselves in these contradictions, saying more than they mean or less than they intend. The performances are restrained. The composition is formal. My influences are filmmakers who use discipline to shape emotion without simplification: the moral architecture of Michael Haneke, the spiritual unease of Todd Field, and the psychological intimacy of Ingmar Bergman. I work with rhythm, duration, and silence to sustain tension that does not resolve.

This film searches for the irreversible shift that comes with recognising a longing that endures beyond hope.