HOLD ME CLOSE
Aurora Brachman and LaTajh Weaver

Financial post-production support for color and sound mix.

About the project: HOLD ME CLOSE explores the unique power and complexity of the relationship between two Queer Black women, 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 women from life within their home, the film bears witness to the distinct constitution of their love.

About the filmmakers: 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 explore narratives of intimate relationships within families and communities. Her short documentaries, including CLUB QUARANTINE, JOYCHILD, STILL WATERS, and THE GALLERY THAT DESTROYS ALL SHAME, have been acquired by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and POV; shortlisted for an IDA Award; selected for Vimeo Staff Picks; exhibited at the MoMA, and screened at numerous 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 graduate of the MFA program in Documentary Film at Stanford University, a 2020 Sundance Ignite Fellow, a 2024 Chicken & Egg Pictures | POV Shorts Co-Production Fund recipient, a 2023 SFFILM FilmHouse Resident, and a 2023 BAVC MediaMaker Fellow. She is also the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship in filmmaking. She primarily makes work about the experiences of Black, brown, and Queer people and is committed to collaborative and ethical storytelling.

LaTajh Weaver is a producer and director in both the narrative and documentary space, and an Oakland native. They most recently associate produced the A24 and Film 4 narrative feature Earth Mama (Sundance 2024).  Their work is dedicated to telling the overlooked stories of Black and Queer intersectionality and exploring ways these communities learn to cope with everyday injustices. In 2022,  they were awarded the SFFILM FilmHouse Residency, wrote and directed Companion, a short film which screened at Mill Valley Film Festival, BlackStar, and IndieMemphis and In 2023 they were selected as a Chicken & Egg/ POV Inaugural grantee.

Currently, they are producing a short documentary commissioned by The Guardian that highlights the children of the revolutionary Black Panther Party. They’ve also been selected as a 2025 Rainin Grantee for their feature length screenplay, NO ONE TURNED AWAY FOR LACK OF FUNDS, a dark comedy challenging identity politics amongst the ever gentrifying Bay Area.

Aurora Brachman Website | Instagram
LaTajh Weaver Website | Instagram
HOLD ME CLOSE