Entangled in a dark dream, HIM finds HER- searching for the true meaning of happiness. When HIM begins to lose himself in his everlasting search, he is confronted with the truth about his reality.

A short film about modern love and the destructive pursuit of happiness told through a mixture of poetry, music and dance.

Director’s Vision for ‘Nocturne’

Nocturne started out as a passion project during Covid. It gave me and my co-creators (Shakuru Tajiri and Jesse Jans) the time to write and reflect on our own personal feelings and experiences throughout our life. The quietness of this period inspired us to open up about love, and the search for happiness. Inspired by Shakuru’s (Artist name: Uzu Moon) dreamy, introspective music, it started as an idea for a music video but quickly grew out into a short film.

We wanted to make a film that was about the claustrophobic and increasingly disparate feeling of searching for happiness but never finding it. In a world where you have access to everything all the time, finding happiness seems to get more elusive than ever. It’s a symptom of many relationships nowadays. And looking at our peers’ happiness results more often in stress, depression and unrealistic expectations about life.
With Nocturne we wanted to shine a light on these issues, and what it does to the relationship with oneself and the other.

Through this meditative and poetic short story we experience the life of HIM, a wandering soul, struggling with grasping his true feelings. In a random encounter he meets HER; a beautiful girl which seems to be the ‘gold’ he is always looking for. This is portrayed by the dream he has of the golden Koi-fish; the illusive and rare fish is the embodiment of his search. Just in reach, but forever out of touch.

Also this is represented by the golden blindfold in the opening scenes, it symbolizes the literal blindness he faces.
Throughout the film I intercut images of a symbolic dance, portraying their entanglement and the status of the relationship. Originally we shot one continuous take of this dance, but that didn’t survive the edit unfortunately.
​​The poem, heard throughout the film, was written by Shakuru for this project. It represents HER’s perspective and beautifully mirrors the struggle and catharsis that both of the characters experienced.

Ultimately Him and Her are an amalgamation of feelings and crises we all face as human beings and hopefully the viewer will recognise the same.

With Nocturne now premiering online we hope many people get to see the film and take their own experience out of it. Hopefully shedding some light and mindfulness in this increasingly confusing world.