Funeral of a Marriage Counsellor

Following the sudden death of their long-term Jewish marriage counsellor, a middle-aged couple take a chaotic stab at rebalancing their relationship, while grappling with their own mortality.

  • Ronit Meranda
    Director
    Honeymoon
  • Ronit Meranda
    Writer
    Honeymoon
  • Fern Scott
    Producer
  • Lucy Sheen
    Key Cast
    "Lynn"
  • Patrick Miller
    Key Cast
    "Will"
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Dark Comedy
  • Runtime:
    13 minutes 20 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    February 14, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    6,500 GBP
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    17:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Ronit Meranda

Ronit grew up in Istanbul, Turkey. Being interested both in arts and films she moved to London in 2004 to do a BA in Fine Arts at Chelsea College of Art and Design where she discovered and pursued the art of making videos. In 2016 she wrote and directed her first short fiction film 'Honeymoon', which has been screened at numerous festivals around the world and is now distributed by NQV Media. Her short dark comedy 'Funeral of a Marriage Counsellor' (2022) which was a finalist at the IMDb Script to Screen Awards 2016 and was selected for BFI South West Connect & Collaborate in 2020, has premiered at Palm Springs ShortFest in June 2022. Her short animation 'Pigeons, All!', was shortlisted for The Pitch Competition 2018. Ronit was a Raising Films writer-in-residence in 2019 where she started developing her short comedy/drama 'Baa, Baa' (in development), which is now being produced by Inclusivity Films.

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Director Statement

Funeral of a Marriage Counsellor is the second of a series of shorts exploring couples' relationships and how much our identities grow and are shaped through disagreements with long-term partners.

I'm interested in how a couple's relationship very often relies on a third post to keep standing, whether that’s children, pets or in this case, a therapist. The film is a dark comedy about a couple who attend their therapist's funeral, without whom their relationship begins to whither. For me, the best way to tell this vacuum in a relationship is through building a sense of humour that at times peaks at absurdity.

I worked with actors Lucy Sheen and Patrick Miller to devise and shape the characters further, drawing upon their own experience of being a non-white mix-race (British East Asian and Black British) couple. The film circumvents assumptions on race by exploring deeper into the characters’ identities.

The dialogue explores another theme that I'm drawn to – death. The couple ponder the question “What would you like to happen to your body when you die?” (also alluded to in "Honeymoon") within the limits of their spiteful dialogue, which is by this point painful to watch. Even a subject as huge as death is still dominated by the conflicts of their relationship. Naturally, aspects of their disagreements are exaggerated to heighten the comedy of the scenario. But despite this, it's important to me to try to normalise rather than melodramatise relationship conflict; so that the threads that connected them once, and could potentially bridge these conflicts again, are still faintly visible.