Joanne Brig­gs

This Love is a ro­mance com­e­dy that could eas­i­ly imag­ine San­dra Bul­lock and Ryan Reynolds as the leads. The plot re­volves around two dis­tant loves, one de­ter­mined to win her back, the oth­er de­mand­ing, amidst all her protests and re­jec­tions, that he proves his love to her.

It is a gushy, fun­ny love sto­ry like all the oth­ers be­fore them. But what makes This Love unique are the peo­ple who wrote the script, sis­ters Dalia and Asha King, born and raised in T&T, who want to show that T&T can write and pro­duce its own love sto­ry. The movie was in­spired by a dis­ap­point­ment in the US fare of ro­mance films.

"The 2013 Christ­mas crop on the Life­time chan­nel were ex­treme­ly poor, very sil­ly," Dalia said. "I am sure we could do this," said Asha in re­sponse to her sis­ter's cri­tique.

They both be­lieved that T&T could con­nect to this, adding cul­tur­al nu­ances that form the back­drop to the ro­mance. They al­so be­lieved that while oth­er film­mak­ers and pro­duc­ers opt­ed to cap­ture the dark side of life here, or as pre­vi­ous lo­cal soap op­eras in­ter­ro­gat­ed race re­la­tions, com­mu­ni­ty life, so­cial struc­ture, This Love can be sim­ply be about a hap­py end­ing.

The sto­ry re­volves around two child­hood neigh­bours Ka­reem (played by Chike Pil­grim) and Nik­ki (played by El­isha Efua Bar­tels) who sep­a­rat­ed af­ter study­ing at Mona, Ja­maica. Ten years lat­er, Ka­reem, now a suc­cess­ful ar­chi­tect, re­turns to Trinidad dur­ing Christ­mas to get Nik­ki back. The sub­plot is the sin­is­ter ploy of re­al es­tate mogul Mitchell Braith­waite (played by Con­rad Par­ris) to pur­chase the prop­er­ties in Ka­reem and Nik­ki's neigh­bour­hood.

Dalia, the el­der sis­ter, is the ro­man­tic buff, a Uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ate in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture and the scriptwriter. Asha is the di­rec­tor and pro­duc­er, an Ho­n­ours grad­u­ate in film and TV pro­duc­tion from New York Uni­ver­si­ty. Their sis­ter Za­kiya is the pho­tog­ra­ph­er on the set as well as the con­tent man­ag­er for the movie's so­cial me­dia pro­mo­tions.

This Love is Asha's first pro­duc­tion af­ter grad­u­at­ing from NYU, but her third ef­fort over­all. She start­ed ear­ly, then a stu­dent at Bish­op Anstey High School when she sub­mit­ted That Bish­op's Girl for the Sec­ondary School Film Fes­ti­val and re­ceived fourth place.

"What in­spired me to do film was read­ing Moon Over a Rain­bow Shawl (by Er­rol John). I start­ed writ­ing scripts and I would do the plays dur­ing lunchtime. Then I de­cid­ed to en­ter the school fes­ti­val. That film flipped the ad­jec­tives–ag­gres­sive, in­de­pen­dent–that stereo­type a Bish­op's stu­dent," Asha ex­plained.

While at Chap­man's Uni­ver­si­ty in Cal­i­for­nia, where she did her first two years of study in the US, Asha pro­duced Pier­rot Granade for the T&T film fes­ti­val in 2011. That film, she ex­plained, in an­oth­er quest of iden­ti­ty. It spot­light­ed the Pier­rot Grenade liv­ing at Lord Har­ris Square de­bat­ing whether to ac­cept her­self as a di­alect speak­er or as an or­a­tor who has the full com­mand of the Queen's Eng­lish.

This time around, This Love does not evoke ques­tions of self. It's sim­ply an of­fer­ing of love. Box­ing Day of 2013, the sis­ters be­gan writ­ing–with Dalia fo­cused on one scene, Asha on an­oth­er un­til they com­plet­ed the script one month lat­er. While it seemed a quick fin­ish, Dalia felt the chal­lenge.

"As a Lit­er­a­ture stu­dent, I al­ways ques­tioned why the books we stud­ied al­ways end­ed in death...per­haps it was the eas­i­est way to end a sto­ry and not wor­ry about what hap­pens next to the main char­ac­ters. But writ­ing a ro­mance com­e­dy is hard, though. It's about the tim­ing," she said.

With 56 roles cast and re­hearsals com­plete, shoot­ing be­gan last month with the in­ten­tion of lo­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion by De­cem­ber to Caribbean Cin­e­mas 8 and Movie Towne and then in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure. The tight time­line is a re­flec­tion of the be­lief that it is pos­si­ble to have it ac­com­plished. Al­so marked in that time­line around the same time as shoot­ing is the spon­sor­ship phase, tar­get­ing the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty to sup­port this pro­duc­tion.

Dalia and Asha's voic­es chime in with oth­er lo­cal film pro­duc­ers who con­tin­ue to lob­by for sup­port of the T&T ef­fort. Af­ter all, film is an in­dus­try and the sis­ters, too, want to make their film prof­itable through the ide­al fi­nan­cial mod­el.

"If we need to reach the stage of Nol­ly­wood and Bol­ly­wood, there must be in­vest­ment," Asha said.

�2 Check out This Love on Face­book for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion.