A BEAR REMEMBERS

Synopsis

Local boy, Peter, is trying to find the source of the metallic sound that haunts the village. When he shares his footage with an old woman it sparks memories of a bear that roamed the hills during her childhood.

Statement of the directors

Cultural erasure is a theme that resonates deeply with both of us.

Hannah’s mother was born to a Cypriot woman in the 1960s but was placed in the foster care system. The state changed her name—deeming it "too Muslim"—and she grew up in a concrete-clad care home in Stevenage, severed from her cultural identity. Her search for belonging became a lifelong pursuit and, growing up, Hannah witnessed the profound weight of this loss: what it means to be cut off from your roots, and how the absence of cultural heritage can leave a person unmoored.

Linden grew up half-Chinese on the Welsh borders, very visibly different from those around him but feeling entirely British. This disconnect — between outward appearance and internal identity — grew to occupy much of his mind. He looked unmistakably Chinese, yet culturally felt no different from those around him. A Bear Remembers reflects some of this turmoil, and the quiet ache of a heritage that feels both distant and inescapable.

These personal histories inform A Bear Remembers, a film that reimagines rural England as a place of slow erosion, where history and memory dissolve into the mud. A boy searches for answers, an old woman recalls a world that once had meaning, and an ancient bear spirit — its mind unravelled — can no longer remember why it cries out. At its core, this is a film about loss. About the spaces where something once existed but no longer does. About the painful truth that, for many communities, erasure is permanent. What is lost cannot always be brought back.