A runaway nun seeking enlightenment and a highway robber descending into madness, are destined to meet in the otherworldly Yorkshire Moors.
The seed for O River was planted during a liminal period in mine and co-writer Ash’s life. We took long walks to process uncertainty, exploring the isolated Yorkshire countryside. This landscape placed us in a long view of time, contemplating destiny, determinism, and cosmology.
We shaped an allegoric story on these walks together, a cat-and-mouse Western, Ira the nun and Bael the highwayman, figures both archetypal and human. Light and darkness. Their journey reflects our own questions about direction, choice, and the cycles we are bound to.
Years and years alike
up here
these entangled stems
dip their ears into the water
again, are born again.
Ira and Bael share a karmic bond — a relationship spanning multiple timelines, bound to the same end. One seeks transcendence, the other spirals into chaos. Their psychodrama is shaped by supernatural forces, as they are pulled toward each other. They are multivalent: representing relationships, two aspects of the same mind, philosophical choices, and nature’s cycle of renewal and decay.
The variation of flowers are an expression of time. Their complexity blooms with time.
O River examines our relationships with ourselves, with others, and with nature, engaging themes of will, transgression, exile and transcendence.
It asks: What is our capacity to choose? To what extent are we entangled in patterns of behaviour and history?
We hope O River invites viewers to pause with their own restlessness, to notice the subtle details of the world around them, and to see their existence as part of a larger, endlessly mysterious cycle.
Written by Eloise Oui & A. Kent
Directed by Eloise Oui
Produced by A. Kent
Cinematography by Jess Dadds
Sound by Rob Wingfield
Sound Design by Joseph Russell
Musical Composition by Mafu
A queer, surreal melodrama about Eva, a woman exploring her sexuality and polyamory in a hallucinogenic theatre space. Where can she find guidance if her romantic existence is a taboo?
Co-Written & Co-Directed by
Eloise Oui & Tasha Island
Produced by Paris Wilder
Cinematography by Samira Oberberg
Edited by Mira Thu
