Private Project

To love what feels most akin

'To love what feels most akin' depicts a futile pursuit of closure and reconciliation amidst the landscape of the artist’s childhood. Merging digital and analogue footage shot on location at the supposed site of Emily Brontë’s novel ‘Wuthering Heights’, the film evokes the cyclical nature of traumatised memory in an attempt to depict the reverberations of grief, love, and addiction.

  • Annie Crabtree
    Director
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    experimental film, artists' moving image
  • Runtime:
    13 minutes 58 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 1, 2026
  • Production Budget:
    35,000 GBP
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    digital, 16mm
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Annie Crabtree

Annie Crabtree is an artist and filmmaker based in Glasgow, Scotland. Informed by autofiction, feminist geopolitics, emotional geography, and crip theory, their work centres nuance, contradiction and emotion to challenge dominant societal norms and evoke the cyclical nature of memory. Annie’s work has been exhibited with Edinburgh Art Festival, Glasgow International, Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, London Short Film Festival, and Sapieha Palace with Rupert, amongst others, and has been supported by the Hope Scott Trust and Creative Scotland.

Headshot by Matthew Arthur Williams, 2025

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Director Statement

'To love what feels most akin' depicts a futile pursuit of closure and reconciliation amidst the landscape of the artist’s childhood. Merging digital and analogue footage shot on location at the supposed site of Emily Brontë’s novel ‘Wuthering Heights’, the film evokes the cyclical nature of traumatised memory in an attempt to depict the reverberations of grief, love, and addiction. Unfolding to a point of cathartic disintegration, the film grasps at a paradoxical space between a determination to embrace, accept, and forgive, and a desire to find release in giving voice to pain, loss and remorse. Invoking the location and themes of ‘Wuthering Heights’ as their entry point, Annie is interested in utilising the novel’s cultural resonance to question the romanticisation of dysfunctional familial and amorous relationships, using this precarious yet potent premise as a means to consider their own relationship to concepts of home, family, and belonging.

Captions and audio description will be woven into the fabric of the new work.

Team:
Annie Crabtree – Artist & Director
Alexander Hetherington – Director of Photography
Seth Hannah & Emma M. Weirda – Co-Writers
Char Bickley – Sound Designer
Sarah Perks – Mentor
Mathew Wayne Parkin – Consultant

Supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland.