«Vessel of Love: A Prelude» by Michaiah Smoots, Deborah Smoots

Filmed along the sunlit shores of Florida and completed in just 90 days, Vessel of Love: A Prelude is more than a short film — it’s an intimate, universal experience, a quiet act of love toward what is broken but not lost.

Directed by sister duo Michaiah and Deborah Smoots, this soulful work blends image, music, and language with rare delicacy, offering a deeply felt meditation on healing and the hidden beauty within the fractured moments of our lives.

We follow Lydia, an art journalist whose discovery of a mysterious patchwork sculpture sets her on an inward journey. Each fragment of the piece evokes a memory, a possibility, a wound transformed into song. Flowing beneath it all is an original score — composed by the filmmakers themselves — that moves like an emotional undercurrent, stitching scenes together like pieces of a life reclaimed and reimagined. Interwoven throughout are glimpses into the everyday lives of Eli (Tristian Lindsey), Hayzlee (Cloud Hays), Cammie (Capri Monet), and Joycelen (Gwen Bucciero), whose presence adds emotional depth and a sense of shared humanity to Lydia’s path.

Rooted in real journal entries and enriched by artworks born from lived experience — hurricanes, waiting, departures — the film pays tribute to the strength found in everyday life and the transformative impact of shared creativity. Crafted with care by an all-local cast and crew, its handcrafted nature and spirit of new beginnings make this “prelude” a promising first chapter for two already luminous creative voices.

Vessel of Love: A Prelude reminds us that what has been fractured can still become beauty — if seen with new eyes and told with an open heart. A feminine tapestry of creativity as self-care, and an ode to the redemptive power of art.