When Declan Nerney (COM’25) handed Sanna Lexhed (COM’26) a 15-page script in late 2023, neither could have predicted it would carry them across five international festivals, into a sold-out screening at the Howard Thurman Center, and onto the radar of audiences from Boston to Stockholm. Reflections of Us, a short film about a young queer couple navigating distance, family pressure, and the work of staying in love, has become one of the most-recognized student films to come out of Boston University this year.
Anna, an anxious 24-year-old, watches her partner Charlie leave town for a family emergency and has to sit with what that absence stirs up. But Sanna and Declan were after something more specific than plot. They wanted a queer story that wasn’t about queerness.
“I was seeing a real lack of queer representation in media, especially two women in a couple together,” Sanna says. “That’s not something we see that often. I wanted to direct a story where their sexualities weren’t the main focus of the film, but more so just a part of their characters.”
Declan, who drafted the script over nearly a year of revisions, framed it the same way. “There’s a lot of films where you’re watching it and it’s like, this is the only queer representation we’re getting, and it’s films that can only be about queer couples. That just doesn’t provide universal resonance. By drawing on relationships that anyone could have, we could bridge that for any audience.”
“The uncertainty of that ending was something I really wanted to take into Reflections of Us,” Declan says, nodding to Fleabag. “When a relationship ends, you don’t know if it’s over for good. And when it continues, you don’t know if the problem is going to go away forever.”
Producing the film outside of a class structure meant the team — Sanna, Declan, and producers Luke Waddy (COM’26) and Rashida (COM’26) — had to build their own scaffolding. They crowdfunded for the first time, brought on a crew that grew to more than 30 people, and leaned on Innovate@BU for a grant that became, in Sanna’s words, the project’s safety net.
“When we first came to Innovate@BU, we had a very broad and big idea of what we wanted to accomplish,” Sanna says. “The biggest feedback we got was to really narrow it down and think about what we’re trying to accomplish with this film — and make sure that every single decision we make, from pre-production to post-production to distribution, goes back to that initial goal.”
That clarity shaped everything that followed: which festivals to target, how to run the social media campaign, how to design the premiere. It also bought creative latitude on set. “We had a car rig for one of the shots where you see Anna from outside the car,” Declan says. “If we didn’t have that money from Innovate, we maybe couldn’t have done that shot.” The same funding opened a door that BU’s standard $100 festival stipend never could — submissions to festivals across Europe and North America.
For Sanna, the harder lesson was scale. “I had a very clear vision in the beginning, and with every person that comes in, it gets shifted a little bit. That was a challenge — just letting all those new perspectives in and letting them have their impact on the story. But in the long run, it’s one of the most valuable things I learned. Everyone is bringing their own experience and their own background into a project, and that changes it for the better.”
The first time anyone outside the edit room saw the finished film was October 3, 2025, at a screening at the Howard Thurman Center for about 80 friends, family, cast, and crew. Sanna, Declan, Luke, and Rashida stood at the back of the room holding their breath.
“It was a really daunting day,” Sanna says. “But as it started playing, I had that feeling of watching it for the first time with the audience. Even though I could pretty much recite every word in the script line for line, it felt really refreshing to have new eyes on it. I could just tell there was so much love and respect and gratitude in the room.”
Declan had been avoiding watching the film all the way through. “I’d put off watching it in its entirety because it was daunting. When you’re editing, there’s so many things you wish you had another take of, another shot of. Watching it together, all of those little details go away because you’re seeing it as everyone else is seeing it. I was so much happier with it than I thought I would be.”
From there, the festival circuit took over. Reflections of Us has been recognized at nearly ten national and international festivals so far, with five wins, including the LA Indie Shorts, the Paris Film Awards, the New York Movie Awards, the Stockholm City Film Festival, and the Swedish International Film Festival. The film has also picked up nominations at the Alternative Toronto Film Festival, the LGBTQ+ Los Angeles Film Festival, the Florence Film Awards, and Short to the Point.
