The producing team behind the SXSW-selected Birdeater has helped give wings to another indie horror, announcing principal photography has commenced in Melbourne on Adele Querol and Jerome Meyer’s LoveBirds.
Described as “part mumblecore, part zombie apocalypse, part body horror”, the film stars writer/director couple Querol and Meyer as themselves as they negotiate the aspirations and disappointments of undergoing IVF treatment.
Their intimate plans are thrown into disarray when a zombie apocalypse breaks out around them, abruptly cutting them off from the outside world. Suddenly there is no escape from a painful truth that they now must face together.
Produced by Breathless Films’ Ben Ferris and Ulysses Oliver alongside Strange Paradise’s T.K. Williams and Lewis Robert, LoveBirds will be shot in inner city Melbourne by cinematographer Carolina Izquierdo Duarte with production design from Irany Turral.
Meyer said they decided to tell the story through the “heightened lens of horror” after finding the realist narrative didn’t properly capture the internal experience of their fertility journey.
“The ‘end of the world’ anxiety generated by a zombie apocalypse was what felt most truthful to the emotional stakes we felt while trying and failing to conceive,” he said.
Querol described LoveBirds as being “for all the women [and men!] quietly sitting in IVF waiting rooms, eyes downcast, desperately wondering if the future they dreamed of is possible.”
Williams said he had seen first-hand the couple’s “daily heartbreak and support for each other coalesce into an on-screen chemistry and vulnerability that we believe is truly unique”.
Oliver was excited to help create a production where “honest performances and a vérité-inspired shooting style bring viewers close to the true terror and tenderness of human relationships under unimaginable circumstances”.
“LoveBirds takes the unsettling uncertainty of infertility and sets it in a world that mirrors the very real sense of isolation and fear often felt by couples struggling to conceive,” he said.