Blankets of love

“Blankets of love” is a short film, which tells the story of drama of losing yourself in the feeling of love, which everyone can identify regardless of culture, religion; the island comes from. “When you love obsessively, you lose the sense of self-identity and if you lose the object of your love, you have no resources to fall back on; It can completely destroy you.”
Akiko (30 years old) arrives in to a new island England, from Japan hoping the distance can help her to cut the emotional attachment with a man - Oskar (40 years old) a music conductor who, after a 10 year relationship has abandoned her for another woman. Akiko works in a central London hotel as a housekeeper. She is isolated, connecting with people only through the belongings in their rooms, observing them through the window. She has never shut the door of the past, she is still waiting for a sign from Oskar that he wants her return.
Akiko finds refuge in a personal project - she is taking photographs of the hotel guests used bed sheets, like a sculpture printed by peoples sleeping and sleeplessness the previous night. When she hears that Oskar has married, she builds with from her photographs a kind of cocoon; an altar, on which she lies down. Sounds of the stories come from the photographed sheets and from one, the confession of betray by Oskar appears. Akiko holds a ritual to free her spirit from the world, which she cannot be reconciled. She believes that after that, they both, along with a baby who died when was born, will meet again.
In the last scene Akiko goes along the hotel corridor. White petals of flowers fall like snow. She passes opened rooms, which are stages of her life. In the last room her parents sit. Akiko snuggles up the her mother's abdomen, finally she enters a light-filled room.
The next day, a woman across the street hangs outside her window a bed sheet, in the Akiko’s open window the opera Madame Butterfly is ending, we hear the click of the cameras shutter; from the window flies the white butterfly...

My first inspiration to write the screenplay "Blankets of love" was from working in a London hotel. I was fascinated by superficiality and the illusion that place and the disjointed worlds of employees and guests. Hotels as a "Tower of Babel", the intersection of people on the way from different parts of the world, cultures in “Hotel-city” that is London on it’s own. The hotel rooms as metaphorical - symbolic image of the subsequent stages of life, to the greatest mystery, the mystery of the end. The beds as a vehicle through all our life. The bed sheets, like shrouds, reflecting the most intimate moments. Starting of the scarf Santa Veronica puts with love on the face of suffering Jesus on his way to the cross when he was still alive. The Turin shroud that shows his face when dead. Positive and negative - life and death.

“Blankets of love” is a short, black and white film shoot on film, narrated by long shots, static camera. The space surrounding of the character as a "living hero”; The sound design and inner monolog of the main character will be a very important part of the story as well as a production design.

The films inspirations are: “Ida” by Pawel Pawlikowski, “Sacrifice” by Andriei Tarkowski, “Blue” by Krzysztof Kieslowski. Poetry/Novel inspirations are: Olga Tokarczuk “Numbers”, “Barren Woman” Sylvia Plath, “Crave” Sarah Kane, “Sand and Foam” Kahlil Gibran. Music inspiration is “Madame of Butterfly” by Giacomo Puccini. Vilhelma Hammershøi paintings and photography of Eva Rubinstein i Sophie Calle “The Hotel”.