we might lose him forever2025
Told with raw honesty, we might lose him forever is a personal short film set in a timeless space where past, present, and future meet. The film weaves narration, writing, sound, and rhythm to explore how meaning lives in both words and silences. With a poetic, autobiographical approach, it sees grief not just as absence, but as the presence of what—and who—remains. It holds space for vulnerability and honors the connections that endure through loss.
- Nominated for the Varlee Memorial Award
- Invited as Visiting Practitioner and Guest Lecturer at the Royal College of Art
Format
Film Production
Role
Director
Cinematographer
Colorist
Editor
Writer
Graphic Designer
In a Nutshell
Grief is one of the most universal human experiences — and one of the least talked about. The discomfort around loss keeps it private, felt deeply but rarely shared. This film project began with a simple but difficult intention: to make space for what's hard to say, but deeply felt. To move grief from taboo to something recognised as common, and profoundly human.
Built from voice memos, personal memory, and found sound, we might lose him forever moves through past, present, and future without a fixed timeline. In a culture that treats loss as something to move on from, it makes space for something harder and more honest: holding it.
Visual Treatment
Low saturation, filmic tone: The slight desaturation gives the image a subtle, filmic quality — softening the sense of time and creating a reflective space that feels removed from the present — like slipping into memory
Warm highlights & soft contrast: The soft warmth in the skin tones and sunlit grass creates a calm, grounded atmosphere — like a late afternoon memory. It adds a sense of quiet familiarity and gentle reflection, without overstating emotion. The colors are warm and tranquil, yet they hold an emotionally heavy story — creating a quiet tension between what’s seen and what’s felt.
Memory Doesn't Move in Straight Lines
Voice memos became central to this project. You can't really rehearse a voice memo. There's a rawness and vulnerability to it — it captures the essence of a moment as it unfolds, like breath, like a thought just beginning to take shape. The pauses are audible. You can feel the care, the fear, the search for the right words. It is writing a letter with your whole body.
Memory, too, came in fragments — flashes of images shifting and overlapping, sometimes clear, sometimes blurred. Film felt like the honest way to hold that. The pacing, the transitions, when to linger and when to move — all of it shaped how memory and time unfold, the way they warp, speed up, slow down, or overlap.
“Your work opened up the space to being vulnerable and reflective on our own experience of losing someone close to our hearts.”
“The first part had me hold my breath....
The silence was so powerful.”
Letting Time Stretch
The film embraced a meditative, intuitive approach — allowing for ambiguity, resisting the need to explain or resolve. Scenes were held longer than expected, because in those pauses, something happens. Emotion settles. Reflection takes place. Time slows, just as it often does in grief.
Sound was stripped back to single, isolated moments — rustling leaves, footsteps, the bounce of a ping pong ball. Everyday sounds that carry a deep personal resonance, transporting through atmosphere rather than narration. They create a deliberate contrast with the voice memos, where human words take centre stage — together shaping an emotional rhythm that mirrors the non-linear nature of grief.
From Discomfort to Dialogue
we might lose him forever doesn't offer closure — and that's the point. By opening up rather than explaining, it invites a quiet shift: from discomfort to dialogue, from silence to recognition. A reminder that connection doesn't end with loss. It simply changes shape.
Index
©2026 Shannon Liu