Dirt in the Diamond
2023 · 20m · UK
Directed by Renee Maria Osubu
Genres: drama
Tones: melancholic, provocative, tender, whimsical
In 1970s London, 12-year-old Jerome attends his first Nine Night — a Jamaican mourning ritual celebrating a life while grieving its loss — and the evening quietly shifts between his childhood eyes and a mother and father carrying their own grief.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Nine Night ritual in 1970s London for an album release for Jords on Motown, twenty minutes, by Renee Maria Osubu — that's commissioned content with genuine cultural memory at stake, and the shifting-perspective structure suggests the form's earning its keep. Yes.
Osubu's Nine Night structure — refusing to let grief or joy dominate, shifting perspective mid-film — is precisely the formal courage that elevates short film, and the 1970s London Jamaican-mourning context is rich and rarely filmed. Twenty minutes; a serious work.
20:36, 32.7K views, 567 likes, Somesuch production, Renee Maria Osubu directing, commissioned for Jords's Motown Records album — the Nine Night structure (grief and joy inseparable) being literalized in the cut is the real ambition. Music-video budget meeting documentary archival intent is a strong hybrid bet.