Eulogy

Directed by Jonathan Lill

2026

Death is rarely the worst part of losing someone. It is the cause of a gap; an emptiness in the shape of a person that lasts long after the funeral, after the five stages of grief, after life returns to some level of normality.

Writer/director Jonathan Lill somehow condenses these feelings into this 10 minute film, which was nominated for Best Writing at this year’s Midlands Movies Awards. Delivered primarily in the form of the titular eulogy, a father (Christopher Irvine) attempts to explain to his daughter (Evelin Kolonko) how the loss of her mother, his wife (Grace Deavall), has left him unable to go beyond the motions of everyday life.

It’s a beautiful, emotionally dense script that manages to dance around a couple of cliches, bolstered by three excellent performances. Irvine anchors the film, as a man struggling to push forward but knowing he must for his daughter. Kolonko is a wonderful young actress, handling the intensity of the script with maturity. And, of course, Deavall, who has quietly delivered multiple excellent performances in recent years, brings warmth and personality to a role that could have simply been a montage of memories.

It isn’t perfect, but to steal a line from the film: ‘it was so close’. The odd clunky line which stands out as too flowery in the grounded script, a final moment that nearly tips into melodrama, but these do not impact the whole.

Working with director of photography, David Graham, Lill shoots the memories in colour, with the present in black and white to represent the loss of the living – not just in the very literal sense of death, but the fact that those mourning are not living either. The switch in palette is a blunt tool, used widely to tell this kind of story – although it’s hard to think of a better visual metaphor – and the colour gradually seeping back into the frame is handled well.

But with all respect to everyone else who worked on this excellent film, it does all come back to that script, and the three performances that bring it to life. To pack that level of emotion into 10 minutes is a skill in itself, and audiences will find themselves mourning for the mother in this, and hoping for the father and daughter, so well-rounded are the characters in that brief period.

★★★★

4 / 5

Matthew Tilt

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