Logline:

Fruitlets is a surrealist micro short film trilogy about two best friends who navigate the absurdity of girlhood through games. Blurring the lines between imagination and reality, each film peels back the layers of growing up — revealing deeper truths hiding beneath the surface.

Concept:

women kill me and Ligatura Films presents Fruitlets!

A collaboration between Jessica Mackie Hunter from women kill me and George Bushaway and Ben Ogynbiyu from Ligatura Films, this trilogy explores three different sides of girlhood through the lens of surrealism, play, and emotional rupture. Each film captures a fleeting but charged moment between two best friends — Maisie and Isla — as they use games and imagination to make sense of the world around them.

Pineapples is dreaming against capitalism!

Juices is emotional excavation through wordplay!

Apples is the quiet exhaustion of modern connection!

Using minimal setups to explore big, strange feelings, this low-budget trilogy forms a surreal, melancholic portrait of growing up — one bite-sized scene at a time. Though each film stands alone, together they form a poetic triptych, connected by tone, characters, and a ticking undercurrent of time, decay, and absurdity.

Juices was shot in August 2024 and completed post-production in April 2025. As the first film in the trilogy, it served as a visual proof-of-concept, shaping the overall direction of the project and guiding us as we went on to shoot Pineapples in June 2025 and Apples in August 2025. It continues to be invaluable as we move into post-production on both films, providing a strong foundation of visual language, tone, and style, along with an established team of cast, crew, and costumes. Already on its festival journey, Juices premiered at České vize and has been selected for the BAFTA-qualifying Aesthetica Short Film Festival.

The triptych:

Pineapples:

Maisie buys a scratch card and pulls Isla into a game of What if: what if they won? Their fantasies spiral — a yacht, a castle, time itself — growing more unhinged with each turn. But the dream collapses into something absurdly mundane, and achingly real. A tender, surreal meditation on capitalism, childhood fantasy, and the cost of growing up.

Juices:

During a game of Alphabet juices — apple, beetroot, caper — two best friends drift between silliness and something stranger. As they creep toward Z, Maisie begins to prod Isla’s discomfort over her dad’s upcoming marriage to a much younger woman. The game slowly unravels, revealing Isla’s buried feelings in one final, gory twist. A surreal reflection on family, youth, and the grotesque toll of emotional repression.

Juices had its European premiere at České vize in June 2025 and will have its UK premiere at the BAFTA-qualifying Aesthetica Short Film Festival in November 2025.

Apples:

Maisie and Isla play a twisted round of Guess Who?, but the tiles are filled with men from first dates. Each flip of a tile reveals sameness, detachment, and the tired rituals of modern romance. What begins as a game slowly echoes something deeper — a surreal fatigue they can’t quite name. A darkly comic portrait of love, disillusionment, and repetition.

Director’s statement:

Although I lived in the UK for nearly a decade, my work is rooted in the Czech Republic’s film legacy — especially the Czech New Wave of the 60s. Fruitlets is influenced by filmmakers like Věra Chytilová and Ester Krumbachová, and embraces the anarchic, playful spirit of experimental cinema.

That influence runs throughout the trilogy — from the score, inspired by Eastern European gothic fairy tales, to the costumes made from traditional domestic fabrics like net curtains and cottons, to the world, which is pastel, uncanny, and dreamlike — deliberately bizarre.

With these three micro-stories — essentially three scenes — I wanted to explore different aspects of girlhood: family, money, and love. These themes are universal, but for girls they’re almost always laced with questions of time, aging, and the ever-fleeting idea of youth. It’s a terrifying world, so I wanted to build a small escape for Maisie and Isla — a space where they can drink champagne, wear pretty dresses, and playact their way through it together. The trouble begins when the snow globe starts to crack, and the real world begins to creep in.

In my work, I’m often drawn to themes of identity and escapism. I think fantasising is intrinsic to the female experience — and an endlessly fascinating lens through which to tell stories. That thread connects Fruitlets to my earlier short, Rabbit. My aim with all my films is to create something specific, visually distinct, bold, poetic — and just a little bit deranged.

The protagonists:

Maisie is light femininity — a romantic, big eyes darting across the room, catching everyone in the act. She’s mischief and midday sun, a child at heart, easily bored, uncompromising, getting her way, hitting her vape, pushing Isla over the edge — or very, very close to it.

Isla is dark femininity — brooding, self-serious, playing mysterious until she cracks into a gummy smile. She’s pragmatic, angry, an escapist. She has an affinity for knives and scissors, a perfect manicure, and being proper. A shy flirt, but loud when allowed. She feels herself falling off the edge — but in a good way.

The team:

For Pineapples and Apples, we’re working with much of the same team behind Juices — a mix of up-and-coming talent and seasoned industry professionals. Staying true to the film’s roots and influences, we’re proud to collaborate with a diverse, international crew spanning the Czech Republic, Slovakia/Hungary, Belarus/Ukraine, France/Scotland, the US, Greece, Canada, Switzerland, and more.

We’re also fortunate to be partnering with George Bushaway and Ben Ogunbiyu of Ligatura Films, who join the project as executive producers.

Production plan & budget:

The funding will support the completion of Pineapples and Apples, as well as the festival run for the full Fruitlets trilogy. The budget is primarily allocated towards modest stipends for cast and crew, equipment rental, set decoration and props, transport, catering, and festival submission fees.

Apples and Pineapples are both in post-production, with our target delivery for the full trilogy timed to meet festival submission deadlines in Q4 2025. Our goal is to premiere Fruitlets on the international short film circuit in early 2026. To safeguard the process, we’ve set aside a small contingency fund to cover any unexpected production costs.

Festivals strategy:

We are going to focus on securing a premiere at a BAFTA/BIFA-qualifying festival that champions bold, stylised, experimental work with female leads such as Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, Underwire Film Festival and Aesthetica Short Film Festival. Since Juices has already been selected for Aesthetica, we are hopeful that the full Fruitlets trilogy will find a home at the festival in future years as well.

Because of the film’s connection to the Czech New Wave, we are then planning to reach the prestigious Eastern & Central European circuit, highlighting the writer/director’s Czech heritage and focusing on stand-out festivals such as Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and PÖFF Shorts.

Next, we’re targeting thematically-aligned art house film festivals to build our reach across experimental, absurdist and women-centric programming such as Festival du Nouveau Cinéma and our alumni, the underground GRRL HOUSE CINEMA.

Finally, after a successful festival run, we would like Fruitlets to live on a micro short platform or an online showcase to build exposure and a digital footprint post-premiere. Our main priority is to pitch the trilogy editorially to Nowness, which is very focused on visual storytelling with strong mood and tone, or NoBudge, which has a strong emphasis on emerging voices, DIY aesthetics, and authentic storytelling.

We're a small team telling a story that’s strange but tender — and we can’t do it without your help. Your support is going to pay our cast and crew, finish post-production, and give the trilogy the festival life it deserves.

Please support Fruitlets, this surreal chaos wrapped in net curtains.

Every pledge helps us keep it DIY but so, so dreamy.

Love you lots,

Jess xx