Escalating fast, and with fierce intensity, the highs of young love can be matched by devastating falls. When a connection forms instantaneously, and without hesitation, the situation that emerges can just as easily be carried into adulthood – where emotions run high, and the foundations on which a relationship is built begin to destabilize.

In short film Teenage Love Forever, director Imogen Harrison considers the sharp decline of a relationship once powered by adolescent optimism. Navigating the hope, naivety and unbreakable trust of young love, she explores how this trajectory might unfold if translated to an adult context, depicting untempered passion and its potential to evolve into irreparable consequences. Becoming entwined at the cost of their own identities, as the intensity of the couple’s attachment becomes unsustainable, the admiration and idolization they once exchanged turns to animosity.

Constructing the film’s narrative around the poem that serves as its backbone, Harrison employs lyrical exploration to channel the beauty, pain and intensity of love – contrasting fragments of the pair’s internal dialogue with the empty conversations that leave them unable to find a resolution. Through the unspoken conflict that shatters the couple’s utopic bond, Teenage Love Forever underscores the inability to communicate clearly that proves their downfall, initiating a process that forces them to reestablish their identities outside of the relationship.