Love & Trouble, the new documentary film from director Amy Hardie goes on general release throughout the UK this June following an outstanding reception to its world premiere screening at Berlin’s Dokumentale’24 festival. The film will hold its Scottish premiere at Edinburgh’s Cameo Cinema with film team guests in attendance including director Amy Hardie and stars of the documentary, Kenny and Kerry Watson, who will take part in a special post screening Q & A.
The film is an exploration of PTSD told through a young couple’s personal story. Using talking therapy, ice baths and horse rides, they look to a more sustainable, healthy lifestyle and demonstrate the importance of wellbeing and mental health care.
Kenny and Kerry married with secrets that almost blow their young family apart. After their baby is born, Kenny’s PTSD is triggered by his crying when he no longer knows what is real and calls it ‘the screams’ and it seems the marriage is over. But Kerry makes a choice – to return to school, study how the brain works, and discover that suffering isn’t a given, that you can “use thoughts to change feelings.”
Filmed over the first ten years of their marriage, Love & Trouble explores identity, shame, anger and love where a young mother must confront her own childhood trauma and her husband’s PTSD to save their marriage, leading them on a decade-long journey through psychology and unconventional therapies.
Director Amy Hardie said “Both Kenny and Kerry come from the old coal mining towns that make up the bulk of Scotland’s industrial regions. They both know about the impact of poverty, the need to get away, the attraction of finding any escape route from the cycles of drugs, unemployment, violence and prison that ruled their childhoods.
By sixteen Kenny had joined the army and Kerry had taken a £5 bus to the other end of Britain. They both wanted escape, a world with options. When I met them, they were going through profound change. It often felt out of control. The narrative arc of the film shows them searching for tools to help them escape mental pain. I’ve been privileged to know them both for the last six years. They have allowed me to join their home life, their wild swimming and trail riding adventures, and especially their ‘talking cure’ sessions, whether IEMT, gestalt, or NLP. Therapy was a concept ridiculed in the environment they come from. But for Kenny and Kerry it has been life changing.
They have learnt to ‘get the brain working for you, not against you.’ They have taken control of their pain. They are able to leave behind their traumas, and the resulting damaging behaviours. Their individual autonomy deepens as they recreate themselves, turning away from anger and shame, delusions and fear, until they finally train to become coaches themselves.”
Love & Trouble, that is being distributed by Dartmouth Films, is directed by Amy Hardie, produced by Sonja Henrici and features original music by composer Jeff Baxter and Mark Orton and new songs by Scottish singer-songwriter Roseanne Reid.
Screening date: 19th June 2025
Venue: Cameo Cinema Edinburgh
Time: 17.30 Running Time: 90 mins Cert: 15
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 