“We’re hopeless romantics. As kids, we longed to grow up and experience what it felt like to be in love. As we grew older and came into our identities as Black Queer women, we found ourselves in a string of intense but dysfunctional relationships with non-Black people. When we entered our relationship with each other, it was a revelation. We’d never been in a relationship with another Black woman before. It was exhilarating, liberating, and profound. We no longer had to translate how it feels to move through the world as a Black woman to our partners––there was a deep knowing shared between us.

But it was also very, very hard. As Black women we’re constantly inundated with critical messages about our worth, our desirability, our intelligence––to love another Black woman requires you to shed the internalized racism, misogyny, and homophobia you carry in your own heart. Black lesbian love requires radical self-love. But we had no examples of how to be a Black woman, loving a Black woman. How to hold space for both of us. Matter of factly, we had only witnessed misogynistic examples of what a relationship with a Black woman could look like.

But Queer love, existing outside the bounds of traditional social expectations, has no predetermined script, and we knew we had the opportunity to define love for ourselves. We decided to make HOLD ME CLOSE because we wanted to witness and uplift a blueprint of what a love like ours could look and feel like. One that is patient, gentle, and kind–––a safe haven against the struggles of the outside world that is forged by an incomparable understanding that can only exist between two Black women.

For Corinne and Tiana, the couple at the center of the film, the film was an opportunity to immortalize their love through archive. The film was created by having the couple wear mics every day for a month and autonomously document their relationship through audio. This month of incredibly intimate audio was then shared with us and sculpted down to become the film. This approach allowed us to truly experience their relationship in its most natural form––when no one else is watching. Through deep trust and a shared belief in the singular power of Black Queer love, HOLD ME CLOSE was born.”

- Co-Directors Aurora Brachman & LaTajh Simmons-Weaver