First Light Movies

A charming short film, Dangerous Relations is a tale of sibling rivalry in which the narrator's younger brother posts extracts from her diary around their school, revealing deeply personal thoughts about her love life. Mortified, the sister retaliates by painting her brother's room pink before the two are reconciled after a savage fight.

Funded by First Light, Dangerous Relations is an excellent example of how digital filmmaking techniques can provide young people with new and creative opportunities to re-imagine familiar stories.

The film uses only sparse dialogue and narration, but employs a visually inventive mix of live-action and animation to convey the lead characters' emotion and emphasise particular characteristics. In one scene, the narrator is taunted by peers and her sense of embarrassment and vulnerability is expressed through an animation in which she physically regresses from a teenager into a toddler. Similarly, in the penultimate scene, brother and sister engage in an epic battle, in which they each use an increasingly improbable and ludicrous range of animated weapons.

The film was produced and filmed by a group of Welsh teenagers, with support from professional filmmakers.

Poppy Simpson

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