A Love Story

When you come to think about it, there are an awful lot of phrases associated with yarn that are used to reference how we feel. "They tied the knot", "the relationship's unravelling", "I've just lost the thread". A great choice of material then for Anushka Kishani Naanayakkara's tactile stop-motion short, which has a woolly head as its protagonist.

Somehow, despite the fact it is never spelt out, you know he's a he, with his white lambswool knit and brown eyes. The love story of the title involves him and a vibrant bundle of wool that enters his world, colourful yarns twirling like sunbeams. But as they begin to knit a life together, something dark looms that threatens the romance.

To say much more would be to spoil this inventive and carefully worked short that has strength in being left open for you to draw your own conclusions. This could be read simply be a metaphor for relationships or, perhaps, for the problems that mental health issues can bring to couples. Naanayakkara creates two very distinctive energies for her characters and uses the movement of the yarn on their faces to carefully knit emotion into her tale.