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Grief part 001

In a surreal dance of grief and surrender, a father confronts his loss from within the comfort of the ocean.

  • Ash K Halliburton
    Writer
  • Ash K Halliburton
    Director
  • Natalie Lauren
    Producer
    Unauthorised Absence, STI: Sexually Transmitted Introductions, Fractured Frame, Bubbles
  • Jamie Neale
    Executive Producer
    In/Between
  • Annabel Scholey
    Key Cast
    Rivals (Disney+), The Couple Next Door S1&2 (Channel 4), The Split (BBC), Britannia (Sky & Amazon), Apollo Has Fallen (Studio Canal)
  • Blair Plant
    Key Cast
    Emmerdale
  • Sydney Aldridge
    Casting Director
    Crab No. 7
  • Adam Barnett
    Director of Photography
    Just Act Normal (BBC, all Episodes)
  • Joel Rosenberg
    1st Assistant Camera
  • Louis Thornton
    Drone Operator
  • Roberta Bononi
    Editor
    Spitting Image (ITV - 2026 BFE Nominee), 7 Keys, Dogman
  • Sasha Wilkins
    Composer
  • Oliver Stutz (SuperNormal)
    Sound Designer
  • Vlad Barin
    Colourist
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    5 minutes
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Ash K Halliburton

After more than a decade as an art director and creative director across film, fashion, and culture, Ash K Halliburton is now directing her own.

Her films are intimate and human-centred, concerned with the interior lives of people in extraordinary ordinary moments. Her debut short "Grief. Part 001." - a father, the ocean, and the unbearable weight of love - is currently on the festival circuit. Meanwhile, her documentary and performance film "Do You See Us?", made in Zambia, explores what it means to be seen and heard as a Zambian woman.

In development: Errol, a documentary portrait of a man who collects taxidermy; Static Boy, a script about grief, humour, and neurodivergence; and her debut feature film.

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Director Statement

I have always been drawn to the moments that exist between words: the ones that live in the body before they reach the mouth.

"Grief. Part 001." began with something I witnessed. A man, at the water's edge, doing something private and profound in the aftermath of loss. I couldn't stop thinking about it. About the way grief doesn't arrive cleanly, how it moves through joy before it breaks you, how love and devastation can occupy the same breath.

I wanted to make a film that didn't explain grief, but inhabited it. One that trusted the audience to feel before they understood. The ocean felt like the only honest landscape for that: vast, indifferent, and yet somehow holding.

The voice notes came from the same instinct. We all carry the voices of the people we love in our pockets now, in recordings of ordinary moments that become extraordinary in their absence. That felt like the most human detail I could give a father in the water.

This is the first part of something larger, a series of films exploring grief in its many forms: each one a different body, a different loss, a different dance between surrender and survival.

For Kim. And for everyone still floating.