Ruby
Ruby
Released 2021
FEATURING: RUBY Latifah Suleiman Kerr JACKIE Henriette Fusi TRAINSPOTTER Kyle Hill
I made RUBY on a micro budget. It is my first feature film. We shot it in the north of England. Sheffield and Cleethorpes. It was a 12 day shoot. The lead is a young girl called Latifah. She has never acted before. We found her outside of Greg’s bakery. The story is simple. It’s about loss, transformation and friendship. Why did I want to make Ruby? I wanted to see if I had a language as a filmmaker, not a style, a language. How could I tell a story only I could tell. Was that even possible. I knew what I wanted to make. Ruby is like a chamber piece. Not many actors. Not many locations. Not much crew. I wanted to make a quiet film. I feel everything right now is really loud. When I visited a Yoko Ono exhibition. There was a room. The walls were bare. Yoko ono invited the public to create their own art, to cover the walls. I sat. I watched. People drew things on the wall and it was always big. To be noticed. To know that they had somehow left their mark. They had an opportunity and they took it. After about twenty minutes. I stood up. I went to the furthest corner of the room. I laid on the floor. In the corner I wrote the words in tiny letters. CAN YOU SEE ME. That’s Ruby. Can we still see her. Amongst the noise? She doesn’t shout. She doesn’t make a fuss. She isn’t loud. But there is a quiet sensitivity. A quiet brutality. A quiet beauty.
For the full cast and crew and more information visit: therubyfilm.com
76 minutes - Color - Digital - Alexa Mini.
In the north of England, a mother returns home after an all night outing to find her adolescent daughter Ruby waiting alone. Both tenderly loved and carelessly neglected by her mother, Ruby copes through her imagination. She tries to create a manageable world from her drawings and cut out pages of catalogues. “You can’t cut out a perfect future,” her mother warns her. And then, when her mother lets the unimaginable happen, Ruby’s world collapses and she is left on her own.
Through experiencing various characters, in particular the strange and kindly Trainspotter, her resilience manifests. She begins to navigate her way beyond the confines of the house and experience the possibilities of her life. And to connect ever more deeply with her mother’s love.
