Short of the Week

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Drama Lily Cole

Balls

If there was a 95% chance your baby would die if they stayed with you...would you try to give them away?

Play
Drama Lily Cole

Balls

If there was a 95% chance your baby would die if they stayed with you...would you try to give them away?

Balls

Directed By Lily Cole
Produced By Fury Films &
Made In UK

A bittersweet tale of desperation, Balls is a story that plays like a game of chance wherein the future of both mother and child are on the line. Providing a contemporary commentary on the challenges faced by single mothers, both in the past and present, writer and director Lily Cole poignantly draws from historical context and classic literature. Starring actresses Sarah Gadon (A Dangerous Method, Cosmopolis) and Tia Bannon (The Midnight Sky), Balls is a deeply moving and thought-provoking work of fiction and social impact. 

Lily Cole, best known in film circles for her role in Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, was commissioned by the Brontë Parsonage Museum to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Emily Brontë, author of Wuthering Heights. It should therefore come as no surprise that the inspiration for Balls came from the English literary classic itself, specifically the non-white foundling, Heathcliff, at the heart of Brontë’s novel.

“Based on the true stories of two women who gave their babies to the Foundling Hospital”

Cole and her co-writer, Stacey Gregg, explore the hypothetical origins of this fictional character, along with the real-life experiences of single and poor mothers during this 18th century time period. Because the film was further commissioned from the Foundling Museum, Cole had access to actual historical archives to add another layer of authenticity to the story.

“I used the archives from the Foundling Hospital to find analogous real-life stories of 18th Century foundlings, and the predicaments that they, and their mothers faced. The film is thus based on the true stories of two women who gave their babies to the Foundling Hospital,” Cole tells S/W. One such woman was named “Black Peggy”, a late 18th Century mother seeking help from the hospital and who inspired Peggy, compellingly played by Tia Bannon in the short.

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Tia Bannon as Peggy in Lily Cole’s Balls

While the film is chock-full of historical references, you may have noticed the glaringly obvious fact that the film doesn’t exactly look like something from an 18th Century novel. That’s because Cole wanted to make the film resonate with a contemporary audience in order to encourage them to identify with the women portrayed in the film.

“We hoped the film would highlight the extraordinary experiences of women and babies during Emily Brontë’s lifetime”

“By setting these historical stories in the present day, I wanted to provoke the viewer to consider how far we might have advanced in terms of gender, racial, class and children’s rights; and also perhaps how far we have yet to go, by creating analogies and disjunctures with our own time,” Cole elaborates. “We hoped the film would highlight the extraordinary experiences of women and babies during Emily Brontë’s lifetime, but also ongoing to very recent times and to today”, Balls producer Kate Wilson adds.

Cole’s calculated approach to this project led her to shoot on 16mm film, given the historical-contemporary overlay of the story. While the film moves in an experimental fashion, it is grounded by the methodical process of having one’s baby accepted into the institution within the narrative.  Keenly omitting character commentary within the dialogue, Cole presents the circumstances in which two desperate women find themselves facing inevitable loss; be it parting with a child or with one’s freedom from motherhood. Cole, therefore, forces us to read between the lines and draw our own conclusions about classism, racism, and how we treat women in society.

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Sarah Gadon as Mary Ann in Lily Cole’s Balls

The performances in Balls are altogether captivating. Gadon and Bannon’s on-screen chemistry is untenable and incredibly moving. The story itself is admittedly quite bleak, but their shared pain is palpable and the magic of this film lays in everything they don’t say to each other, that you know deep down they must feel. As the two women play a game of color-coded chance, choosing balls at random to determine their baby’s fate and ultimately their own, they simultaneously have everything to gain and lose.

Women’s power and independence continue to be thwarted by a patriarchal society that unethically determines their fate. While the subject matter is quite heavy, Cole’s approach is delicate and deeply sympathetic to her female characters. Balls, therefore, forces us to re-examine the hardships single parents are faced with.

“I notice recurring themes – that I like to explore: questions more than answers”

Balls was produced by Fury Films and was nominated for Best Short Film at the London Short Film Festival. It was also nominated for Best Director, Best Producer and the XX Award at Underwire. Cole is currently working on three feature-length stories, exploring concepts of gender, forbidden love, and new-age environmentalism, that she plans to begin writing this year.

“When I consider what unites these disparate projects, and Balls, and also other work projects of mine, I notice recurring themes – that I like to explore: questions more than answers; the multiple perspectives that always exist in every story; and that fruitful space beyond firmly held ideas of right and wrong,” Cole tells us. We couldn’t be more excited to see what she comes up with next!