Married Couple Turns Heartbreak Into Art With Feature Film COLD

Open Sky is run by award-winning artists Claire Coaché and her husband Lilse Turner. Following the devastating loss of two babies, in 2012 and 2014, the couple developed Cold, a full-length feature film based on their own experience and those of 12 other bereaved parents. Coaché, a physical theatre director and performer, and Turner, a playwright and film maker, hope to amplify conversation about this still-taboo subject that affects so many families.

Their heartbreaking experience, losing their first baby to a fatal genetic condition, and their second in a miscarriage with near-fatal blood loss for Claire, meant they would have no more children. The couple researched and discovered that 1 in 4 pregnancies do not reach full term, prompting them to create Cold, co-written by them and dedicated to their baby sons Bodhi and Brock, who came but could not stay.

Cold is a dark fairy tale for adults, following a couple who attend an ante-natal hospital appointment before being mysteriously transported to a bleak frozen forest. Lost in the freezing woods, unable to speak and hunted by a terrifying beast, they must save themselves and their unborn child. In their desperation they stumble on an abandoned cabin. So begins a struggle for survival in which they must face the hostile elements, malign magical forces and a truly terrible choice.

Cold, a play with initial development at Bristol Old Vic and Barbican Pit, became a theatrical feature film with funding from Arts Council England. Cold was filmed on the main stage of Courtyard Hereford in March 2021.

Go and see Cold when it comes out. It's an extraordinary and powerful and important piece of work that moved me more than I'd have imagined. - Julia Bueno, Psychotherapist and author of The Brink of Being.

Turtle Key Arts present an Open Sky production, Cold, in partnership with Courtyard, Hereford. Supported by Fertility Fest, Antenatal Results and Choices (ARC) and The Miscarriage Association. Funded by Arts Council England, The Elmley Foundation and Herefordshire Community Council.