Nettle Dress (12A)

There’s an almost fairytale-like quality to the subject of this lovely, poignant documentary: after the death of his beloved wife, a man spends seven years crafting a hand-spun dress from foraged nettles. Allan Brown, a textile artist, speaks eloquently of the rich symbolism of taking something that is a source of pain, stripping it of its sting and, over the years, gradually reshaping and repurposing it into a thing of beauty. The laborious process – from gathering bushels of the plants in the woods, labrador at heel, to spinning the fibres of the stalks into thread and weaving the thread into a rough-hewn fabric – is captured with a lyrical sensitivity by film-maker Dylan Howitt’s unobtrusive camera.

DIRECTOR: Dylan Howitt

CAST: Allan Brown