Story and memory rooted within landscape | Lara Fullalove

For filmmaker Lara Fullalove, memory is rooted in landscape. It’s an essence that not only inspires her writing but ripples through her filmmaking – whether that’s the breath-catching family drama Christmas, 1978, or the forthcoming folk horror Dig My Grave, inspired by the legend of Jay’s Grave.

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[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiGrzQCsfmE[/embedyt]

New film Dig My Grave represents a lot more than just one story of a woman, says Lara. “It says a lot more about our society, especially now, when we’re looking at abortion rights in the US and the UK. It feels so relevant still, which is in itself sad. Instead of recreating the legend as a period piece, it’s more of a meditation on grief within the present day.”

Hewn by the Dartmoor landscape

While Dig My Grave reimagines local myth for modern times, Christmas, 1978 carries a rasping emotional desolation, hewn by the Dartmoor landscape. The moors seem to have worn away any remainder of hope in this story about a young man and his relationship with his father, navigating homosexuality and Catholicism within 1970s working-class Devon.

Christmas, 1978 grew out of an idea inspired by the Dartmoor pastime of letterboxing, “which I used to do with my dad and my brother,” Lara tells D&CFilm. “I have memories of going along Haytor or Hound Tor, and being so excited when I found one of those little plastic containers. That is so unique to that location, and also unique to me and my childhood and growing up and Devon itself.

A perfect place to shoot

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“A lot of my writing is not necessarily based on dialogue, but more about the visuals and the context. Dartmoor is such a perfect place to shoot, even though it is feasibly and logistically not easy at all.”

For “not easy logistically”, think isolated locations and exposure to harsh February weather.

“Being up on a tor is quite exposed, especially if you’re in period costume, and you’ve been there since five in the morning,” says Casper Webb, who was first assistant director on Christmas, 1978 and is producing Dig My Grave.

Vintage

But it wasn’t just the cast and crew who faced challenges during the five-day shoot. The vintage lenses they used to create the period feel didn’t function as expected in freezing temperatures and 50-mile-an-hour winds, which meant more takes than planned.

The church sequence remains a highlight for the filmmakers – not only for its contrast to the open moorland, but for the support of 30 volunteer extras who filled the pews. Dressing the interiors to reflect the 1970s period aesthetic was another high point for the team, despite the cramped nature of parts of the shoot.

Sparse and sensitive

What’s created is both personal and expansive – a sparse and sensitive story that points to the maelstrom of inner worlds set in a distant and suffocating social and geographic environment. No wonder it did so well on the festival circuit, gaining traction outside of uni (University of the Arts London, where Lara and Casper graduated in 2024).

When we caught up with them, they’d just been on their first recce for Dig My Grave, and had visited the grave of the unmarried mother, who was buried on a crossroads, but who has never been forgotten – fresh flowers appear daily.

Sadness

“I feel a great sense of sadness just being there and seeing the flowers. People leave coins and pennies there as well,” says Lara.

“My gran used to tell me the story of Kitty Jay,” she says. Not just her gran – her brother reminded her of a school trip near the grave where classmates frightened themselves with stories about the legend.

“There’s a story and a memory rooted within that landscape, which a lot of my filmmaking comes from – a memory or a context or something that you can then build a narrative and a script from. Dig My Grave is very much about a cycle of life and death.”

For Lara, films should have a social relevance and a bridge to the present. For the legend of Jay’s Grave, that’s through word of mouth and contemporary actions.

A bridge to the present

“Film is a tool of social and societal reflection,” says Lara, talking about the cycle of nature, death, and remembering people. “We keep people alive through stories and folk tales and ghost stories.

“Kitty Jay was a woman who got pregnant out of wedlock and felt that she had to take her own life, and then was punished for doing that by being buried on a crossroad, so her soul could never find its way back to haunt the living. That is so incredibly saddening, but yet also so related to our current world,” says Lara. “The landscape is rooted within that story. It breathes it.”

And in terms of great, affecting storytelling, Lara and Casper aim to create work that is artful, powerful and strikes a chord.

“It needs to be commercially viable. It needs to be entertaining. People need to want to watch it,” says Casper, and that means a resonance beyond Dartmoor.

Visual atmosphere

But the inspiration remains grounded in the reality of place. Casper describes how seeing the Dartmoor setting of Kitty Jay’s legend is a route to working with DOP Abigail Azirou and Lara to create a visual atmosphere.

“My job, when I’m producing, is getting people that are more talented than I am,” he says. “Especially for films that are so grounded personally.”

For Lara, too, that collaboration is key. “One of the things I love the most about shooting is being with a crew of people who are all heading for one goal, which is to make the best film that we can all make.”

Christmas, 1978 is finishing its festival run and will soon be available to watch online. Dig My Grave is shooting on Dartmoor in spring 2026.