Directed by Sophie King. Written by Kate Radcliffe. Produced by 19th Street Productions. Starring Ophelia Lovibond, Jacob Anderson, Felicity Montagu, Jordan Alexandra, Alex Bhat, and Phoebe Pryce. This film is based on Writer Kate Radcliffe’s loss of her son, Dexter.
There is a particular kind of silence that follows a death nobody knows how to talk about, and STILL LIFE spends 11 unflinching minutes inside it.
Jess and Max were an ordinary couple counting down to their first child when, at 24 weeks, their son was stillborn. Writer Kate Radcliffe and Director Sophie King’s film aren’t as interested the loss itself as much as everything that comes after: The maternity clothes still hanging in the closet, the well-meaning yoga instructor, the chipper estate agent, the glowing, heavily pregnant sister-in-law who doesn’t know what to say and says too much anyway.
Jess is left to invent a version of motherhood that has no rituals, no script and no recognizable medical name.
The films is based on Writer Kate Radcliffe’s death of her son, Dexter, and that lineage reveberates in every scene. Nothing here feels imported from someone else’s idea of grief nor the public’s perception of grief.
The screenplay refuses the easiest paths that other cinematic writers might have considered — mawkishness on one side, misery on the other — and instead finds something closer to how grief can actually rave: Absurd, impatient, brutally painful – and expectantly comedic: A clumsy nurse, a string of hollow condolences, the sheer social chaos of a world that doesn’t know when to shut up. Radcliffe turns these into darkly comedic without ever cheapening what’s underneath it. The humor doesn’t relieve the tension so much as sharpen it.
Director King, whose own path to parenthood involved miscarriages and years of IVF, directs with a steady hand that never tips into sentimentality. She lets scenes sit a beat longer than expected, trusting silence to do work that dialogue can’t.
The tonal high-wire act — grief and comedy sharing the same frame — is the film’s biggest risk, and King lands it, using humor as a pressure valve rather than a punchline machine.
Starring Ophelia Lovibond and Jacob Anderson STILL LIFE: Finding the Absurd in the Unimaginable
Ophelia Lovibond, as Jess, carries the film with a performance built on restraint. She underplays where a lesser film would have pushed her toward big, weepy set pieces – and the choice pays off: Her numbness reads as more devastating than tears would.
Jacob Anderson, as Max, is quieter still, a man trying to hold a household together while processing a loss the world keeps forgetting is also his. Felicity Montagu, as a consultant delivering news no one wants to hear, and Phoebe Pryce round out a supporting cast that understands the assignment — everyone here is a little bit useless in the face of grief, which is precisely the point.
Cinematographer Carmen Pellon Brussosa shoots the film with a clean, unfussy eye that keeps the focus on faces and the spaces between people rather than reaching for visual metaphor. Nothing about the craft calls attention to itself, which is exactly right for a story this intimate.
STILL LIFE arrived at the HollyShorts Festival with a stated ambition beyond the festival circuit: The filmmakers have positioned it as a proof of concept* for a television series, and it’s easy to see why. Eleven minutes barely scratch the surface of what Jess and Max’s story could sustain — there’s a fuller, messier version of this world that the short only gestures toward.
What lingers isn’t a single scene but the film’s underlying elocution: That stillbirth remains one of the least-discussed griefs and that silence around it can do real harm.
One in every 250 UK pregnancies ended in stillbirth in 2022, according to figures the filmmakers and the isolation that follows is rarely, if ever, is represented on screen with any honesty. STILL LIDW doesn’t offer easy comfort. It offers something more useful — company and the permission to laugh without letting go of the ache.
Verdict: A short film with the emotional prowess of something much longer. Comedic, sharp, and quietly devastating, anchored by a career-best turn from Ophelia Lovibond.