HOLD ME CLOSE explores the unique power and complexity of the relationship between two Queer Black womxn, Corinne and Tiana. Utilizing audio the couple self-recorded every day over the course of a season, Corinne & Tiana experience cycles of life’s joys and pains together in the home they share. Depicted through elegantly composed tableaus of domestic scenes of the couple shot on super 16mm film, paired with searingly intimate documentary audio of the womxn from life within their home, the film bears witness to the distinct constitution of their love.

A Message From The Directors

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

Meet the Directors

LaTajh Simmons-Weaver | Co-Director | Co-Editor

LaTajh Simmons-Weaver is a screenwriter, director and producer from Oakland, CA. Their work blends humor, imagination, and irony to explore overlooked stories within Black Queer dynamics, examining how these communities learn to cope with everyday injustices. One of Weaver’s previous projects, CYCLES, follows a youth advocate worker and a young man, as they search for their purpose amid danger in Oakland, where the murder rate remains the second highest in the country. Using a blend of Western cinema tropes and gritty realism, Weaver processes what growing up surrounded by gun violence looked like to them. This film series was inspired by Weaver’s mother who’s worked in gun violence for over 25 years. 

In early 2019, Weaver was commissioned by the National Queer Arts Festival to direct a short film reflecting on their experience growing up in Oakland as a Black Queer and how it weighs on their relationship to America. They have also been commissioned to direct a series of short films for the Museum of African Diaspora (MoAD) and SF Arts Foundation. 

In 2022, Weaver was awarded the SFFILM FilmHouse Residency. During this time, they wrote and directed the short film COMPANION which screened at Mill Valley, BlackStar and IndieMemphis. That same year,  Weaver was selected as Chicken & Egg/ POV Inaugural grantee to develop the short film HOLD ME CLOSE alongside Aurora Brachman. Through their residency, Weaver collaborated with award-winning director, Savanah Leaf serving as an Associate Producer of EARTH MAMA (A24, Park Pictures & Academy Films), which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and won a BAFTA for Outstanding Debut. 

In 2024, Weaver received several accolades, including The Future of Film is Female short film grant, the East Bay Fund for Artists, and the Fleishhacker Foundation grant, to produce their narrative short film, BUDGET PARADISE. The film follows Chester a Black, non binary painter as they search for space and permission to exist within their hometown. BUDGET PARADISE is currently being submitted to Film Festivals for its premiere.

Aurora Brachman | Co-Director | DP | Co-Editor

Aurora Brachman is an Emmy Award-winning documentary director, producer, and cinematographer. She was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. Through patient and poetic storytelling, her films bear witness to intimate moments of self-discovery. Her most recent film, HOLD ME CLOSE, will be premiering at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Her short documentaries, including JOYCHILD, STILL WATERS, CLUB QUARANTINE, and THE GALLERY THAT DESTROYS ALL SHAME, have been acquired by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and POV; have been shortlisted for an IDA Award; selected for Vimeo Staff Picks; exhibited at the MoMA, and screened at 50+ film festivals including Sundance, True/False, Hot Docs, BlackStar, and SFFILM. She co-produced Apple TV+’s GIRLS STATE (Sundance 2024), associate-produced A24’s STEPHEN CURRY: UNDERRATED (Sundance 2023); and assisted on the critically acclaimed Showtime docuseries COUPLES THERAPY.

Aurora is a Sundance Ignite Fellow, a Chicken & Egg Pictures | POV Shorts Co-Production Fund recipient, a Chicken & Egg (Egg)celerator lab Fellow, a Future of Film is Female Short Film Fund Recipient, an Inside Out Re:Focus fund recipient, a SFFILM FilmHouse Resident, a BAVC MediaMaker Fellow, and a Pacific Islanders In Communications Digital Shorts Fund recipient. She is also the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship in filmmaking. She holds an MFA in documentary film from Stanford University. Aurora primarily makes work about the experiences of Black, brown, and Queer people and is committed to collaborative and ethical storytelling.