Jellyfish and Lobster

Jellyfish and Lobster is about discovering the vastness of life by coming to terms with the inevitability of our mortality. It’s about embracing the boundless depths of joy within the small junctures of life we are given. It’s about freeing our hunger for life from the servitude of time.

Over the course of the last few years, I’ve reckoned with my own ideas of life, death and love and found myself concluding 3 things: 1. That ultimately in the end, our lives can only be measured by the depth in which we live it, not in it’s length. 2. That the deepest moments of joy and love are often not experienced within the perceived grandiosity of life but in the darkest corners of it. And 3. Love, deep love, should transcend all physical limitations and perceptions of who we are.

The idea was born in January 2021 when my aunt, who has been a second mum to me my whole life was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer. This comes after my Dad already passed from cancer in 2019. The only way I felt I could both survive and process the pain was in reconstructing it into something beautiful. Of course, there’s nothing beautiful about the cancer itself but there is everything beautiful in the way I witnessed the people in the cancer wards I’ve sat with over the last 5 years while accompanying both my Dad and aunt, not allow themselves to be defined by this cruel disease. Who somehow found the will to live and love relentlessly in the face of their impending end of life and with such a potent and vigorous sense of humour. I want to make this film for them and all those who will, unfortunately become them.

Statistically 1 in 2 people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. Whether it’s those fighting it directly or alongside a loved one who is, I wanted to create something that would project our lives and experience back to us within the curative power of comic relief and magical realism. A cancer and dementia story that isn’t about cancer and dementia. The characters in the world are the narrators of the story, not the circumstances in which they find themselves in. Because if we can’t find the magic in the most unlikeliest, grotesque of places, where else would we? When we deny ourselves the inherent consent to laugh at our darkest moments, we simultaneously dehumanise the experience. Being able to turn cancer into the punchline of a joke was our way of reclaiming power and joy back from an enemy that wanted to take those things from us.

On the surface level, it’s a love story between two souls who, alongside contending with their physical vulnerabilities and illnesses, contend also against the ageist expectations of society that deny them experiences the world has beseeched them to have ‘outgrown’ but with nothing left to lose, the socially constructed lines in which we confine our lives to, become insignificant. Terry and Jenny are relentless in their pursuit of happiness. They do not allow the slow, thieving hands of time to be weaponised against them, instead they shake hands with it. At its core, this film is a meditation on self-grief, loss, life and love, all within the cadenced echo of laughter.