Cleave

After her partner’s death, a woman refuses separation, binding them together in a silent domestic ritual where love, grief, and control become indistinguishable.

  • Yorgos Keramydas
    Director
  • Yorgos Keramydas
    Writer
  • Yorgos Keramydas
    Producer
  • Chryssa Thessalonikiou
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Psychological drama, Body horror, Arthouse
  • Runtime:
    6 minutes 51 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 30, 2026
  • Production Budget:
    100 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Greece
  • Country of Filming:
    Greece
  • Language:
    Greek (Modern)
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    1.37:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Hellenic Open University
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Yorgos Keramydas

Yorgos Keramydas is an emerging filmmaker from Ptolemaida, Greece. His work is rooted in dark psychological storytelling, visual narration, suspense, and emotionally restrained characters. Since his early encounter with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, he has been drawn to films that create tension through atmosphere, silence, and suggestion.

He has directed several student and independent short films, frequently working across writing, directing, cinematography, editing, music, and color grading. This self-sufficient process has shaped a visual style focused on controlled compositions, symbolic objects, psychological unease, and the expressive use of light, rhythm, and sound.

His films have received awards and nominations at independent festivals, including distinctions for editing, cinematography, soundtrack, experimental film, student short film, and no-dialogue cinema. His work often explores guilt, isolation, emotional distance, obsession, loss, and the hidden violence within intimate relationships.

Alongside filmmaking, he has a background in digital journalism, graphic design, music, and computer technology, elements that continue to support his independent, hands-on approach to cinema.

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Director Statement

Cleave is an arthouse psychological drama with elements of body horror, exploring grief as possession. The title comes from the double meaning of the word: to split apart and to cling to. This contradiction became the emotional and visual foundation of the film.

The story follows a woman who refuses to separate from her dead partner. Bound together by chains and handcuffs, they remain inside a distorted domestic routine where dressing, eating, sleeping, and moving through the house become rituals of denial. Mourning slowly turns into control, and intimacy becomes a form of confinement.

I wanted the film to unfold without dialogue, allowing bodies, space, objects, light, and silence to carry the narrative. The chain structures the film’s entire physical language. It dictates distance, movement, rhythm, and power, turning attachment into something visible and materially unavoidable. The body horror emerges from this same logic: when emotional captivity reaches its limit, the body becomes the only place where resistance can appear.

Visually, the film moves through a cold, gradually desaturated palette. As the story progresses, color drains from the image, reflecting emotional exhaustion and the collapse of denial. In the final sequence, light becomes both unbearable and necessary: not a simple image of salvation, but the force that makes separation possible.

Ultimately, Cleave examines the violence hidden inside attachment. It asks whether love can survive without freedom, and whether letting go is an act of loss or the first condition of survival.