The Birthday

Short film, NABA Milan, 2025

The Birthday is a four-minute coming-of-age short film produced during the NABA Short Film Making course in Milan. The film follows Lorie on her birthday as she confronts a painful memory linked to her best friend, Sienna, moving through grief, nostalgia and the fragile boundary between memory and reality.

Visually, the project explores an inner state of emotional suspension: a life that feels flat and colourless until connection begins to return movement, warmth and colour. Intimate framing, stillness and close-ups are used to hold the protagonist’s grief, while moments of friendship introduce a softer rhythm of resilience.

As my first direct short film project, The Birthday marked an important transition from photography and conceptual image-making into moving-image storytelling. It introduced me to the practical and emotional grammar of filmmaking: scene construction, collaboration, pacing, atmosphere and the translation of an interior state into cinematic form.

Music Credit The Marías – Sienna