Sweet, Heart

I made Sweet, Heart to open a conversation about social anxiety and the loneliness that grows when we perform being “cool and okay” in everyday small talk, in order to belong and appear successful. Beneath that surface, insecurity and a sense of falling short often remain unspoken. The constant masking this requires is deeply stressful, especially for sensitive people who easily read the subtle signals of others.

At the same time, beneath those masks, we long for genuine, deeper connection. I am fascinated by the fragility of social connection and the small ways we make or break togetherness. A misplaced joke, a gesture, or a raised eyebrow can shift someone’s inner landscape without anyone else noticing. This leaves me with a persistent question: how do we open up and find each other when our environments tempt us to wear masks?

Before film, I worked in a corporate world where visibility and effortless small talk were often valued as much as in-depth knowledge. Even though I learned to function within that system, it carried a discomfort I couldn’t yet put into words. Years later, after leaving that world for the visual arts and gaining experience in social work, I met people struggling with similar pressures, burning out. Hearing their stories of masking true emotions, I recognised parts of my own journey and realised that this feeling was a collective signal rather than an individual shortcoming.

I wanted viewers to feel like Roos’ best friend, walking beside her through the experience of social anxiety. My aim was to look with an eye of empathy - and for viewers to be drawn into her emotional world even when, from the outside, things would not seem very dramatic. Anxiety is often an invisible emotion, not expressed through obvious gestures, but through a subtle reshaping of the senses of the person experiencing it. I wanted to stay close to that reality by taking Roos’ senses as our guide.

To achieve this, we worked with close handheld shots and subtle shifts in perspective, moving between Roos’ perception and the surrounding reality. Sound became a key storyteller: volumes are dynamic, voices subtly transform and the room sometimes feels slightly out of tune with itself. These elements mirror the way anxiety distorts what is otherwise ordinary.

With the actors I focused on physical presence over performance. Dialogue grew from a combination of the script and improvisation, allowing the actors to follow their own instincts. Working with emerging performers gave us the freedom to explore the filmmaking process together, without feeling bound by predefined industry expectations.