Years after their wartime love, a disillusioned American soldier and a former French Resistance fighter reunite in Paris, but the encounter threatens to shatter their fragile adjustment to peacetime.
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Director Biography – Eliot Gelberg-Wilson
Eliot Gelberg-Wilson is a filmmaker from North London.
Having studied MA Filmmaking at London Film School, where he won a Creative Skillset Scholarship, he has written and directed documentary and fiction shorts that have been shown at festivals worldwide. His short film ‘Moshe and Amira’ screened at OSCAR- and BAFTA-qualifying BronzeLens Atlanta, UK Jewish Film Festival and Bolton International Film Festival among others, leading to being BAFTA long-listed.
Since then, he created and directed ‘Rendezvous’ alongside Dino Kelly, Francesca Zoutewelle and producer Olivia Song, with the support of The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and ‘If Not Now, When?’ with producer David Freedman and support from Genera and Cine Circle, both entering the festival circuit in 2026.
He has self-shoot directed and done videography for clients including artists Arch Hades and Eliza Kentridge, Cecilia Brunson Projects, Fiction Records, and The Cartoon Museum. Alongside cultural and arts filmmaking, He has shot arts photography that has been featured in Forbes, Observer, Made in Bed and more. He has also shot promos that have been promoted by the United Nations and Bertha DocHouse.
Eliot loves working on films about identity, society, creativity, and hidden desires.
Director Statement
Having explored mental health and political violence in my work, I am fascinated by the many facets of PTSD. As opposed to flashbacks of horror disrupting states of peace, I have come across those who carry a strange nostalgia for times of trauma, one that makes subsequent periods feel bland and insignificant. So I was incredibly excited when actor Dino Kelly, who like me has family affected by war, proposed the idea of ‘Rendezvous.’ We wanted to show this other side of PTSD, affecting those for whom connection, love and good accompanied absolute horror. We conceived of a US soldier and French Resistance fighter falling in love during WW2: characters whose traumas differ, but who both experience a powerful sense of meaning against terror and destruction, and then meet again years later.
We developed our character-led approach into a collaborative storytelling method, working with the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to facilitate workshops where we explored the characters with Dramaturg Yael Shavit, and then wrote the script together. Having cast Francesca Zoutewelle to lead alongside Dino, my mission became one of sustaining an organic warmth and freedom in the performances, observing them explore within workshops, running long interviews in character, and making diary films.
I immediately thought of “Hiroshima, Mon Amour”, “Cold War,” and “Casablanca,” so black and white seemed a natural choice, not just as a period drama, but to express a flat reality that characters inhabit beyond their most exciting days. With DoP Tamas Meder and Production Designer Clemency Cartwright, we added texture to the image that suggests an underlying violence and passion, as well as working endlessly with Producer Olivia Song to place 1950’s Paris in North London, on a budget that only just allowed enough room to bring the past to life. We built on character experience further in post, where edit sequences and sound oscillate between the characters’ subjective experiences, weaving between present and past.
With an incredible team, I believe we have created a story that brings to life the contradictory idea that times of greatest trauma can also be times of greatest connection.
| Eliot Gelberg-Wilson Director, Writer Moshe and Amira Dino Kelly Writer, Producer Francesca Zoutewelle Writer Olivia Song Producer Beach Toys (short, BFI), Run Like We (short, Prime), How To Catch A Fish (short) Dino Kelly Key Cast “James” Peaky Blinders, Den of Thieves: Pantera, Sweetpea Francesca Zoutewelle Key Cast “Colette” Mr Turner, Whitstable Pearl, Agatha Raisin Tamás Apor Méder Cinematographer Praeis (short, Cannes 2024), Scorched Earth (short, Locarno 2023), Summer Shade (short, BFI London 2020) |
