Close
Through his late father's negatives, a son confronts a difficult, distant love; what he develops carries him and his mother back to the beach where they were made.
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TODO: trailer
Keane discovers a box of his late father's negatives and prints them in an Edinburgh darkroom. The images, his mother Diane young and himself as a child, surface a difficult, distant love. Together they return to the beach where they were made.
Close is a debut fiction short about how photography works on memory. Keane inherits his father’s negatives, and with them a way of seeing he never quite had. The film moves between the red dark of the Edinburgh darkroom and the open light of Dunbar beach, where the photographs were first taken.
It was shot principally over a July 2025 weekend in Edinburgh and East Lothian, including at Stills: Centre for Photography, by a crew of ten. TODO confirm shoot dates and any pickups. It is near wordless. The meaning sits in the images and the gap between a captured fragment and the life around it.
TODO: director’s note in his own words, 2 to 3 sentences, if he wants one on the page.
Credits
- Director
- Robert Ripley
- Writer
- Robert Ripley
- Producers
- Robert Ripley, Connor McCausland
- Director of Photography
- Piers Deseilligny
- 1st AD
- Connor McCausland
- 1st AC
- Sean Monroe
- Gaffer
- Alex Caldow
- Sound Recordist
- Rowen Henderson
- Hair and Makeup
- Sophie Wilson
- Unit Stills
- David Erskine
- Runner
- David Grinly
- Music
- Neil McDonald
- Editor
- Isaac Allen
- Sound Design
- Logan Eason, Marco Biagini
- Colour and Online
- Piers Deseilligny
- Poster
- Manasvi Singh
Cast
- Keane
- Dylan Blore
- Diane
- Kirsten Maguire
Thanks: Red Dot Radio, Malcolm Kirby, Alfie Sowden, Laura Clough