Days Like These
Set in a quiet coastal town, Days Like These is a tender portrait of youth and nostalgia. In a world in flux, two friends retreat from the noise for just a little longer — to roam, remember, and face the quiet truth of moving on.
Written, produced, directed, shot and finished by Remco Merbis.
A Pixillion Film
With Violet Morris and Tyler Pringle
Shot on a Sony A1 II and the Sony 28-70 GM f/2 lens.
Days Like These is a film about that quiet, liminal moment when one chapter ends and another hasn't quite begun.
Jack and Emily are recent graduates spending a few final days in their old student house, drifting through memory, nature, and each other’s company while the future looms, undefined. Their story touches on something I see every day in the lives of my own daughters and their generation: the weight of uncertainty.
Gen Z has grown up in a world shaped by climate fear, mental health crises, and an overwhelming digital landscape. I wanted to make a film that doesn’t shout, but sits still with that; in softness, in light, in fragments.
Days Like These is both personal and observational. It’s about growing up gently, even when the world won’t wait.
Official selection Global INDIE Filmmaker Awards, South West Film Fest.
Director’s statement
Days Like These explores the feeling of standing on the edge of adulthood, when a chapter is ending but the future remains uncertain.
Set during the final days of student life in a small coastal town, the film follows Jack and Emily as they move through familiar spaces that are already beginning to slip away. Their relationship sits somewhere between friendship and something more, shaped by shared history, hesitation, and the difficulty of putting emotions into words.
The film reflects a generation growing up under a constant sense of unease. Climate anxiety, global instability, and the quiet pressure to define oneself exist in the background, rarely spoken but deeply felt. Technology is present not as a threat, but as part of the emotional landscape, influencing how connection and distance coexist.
Stylistically, the film is observational and restrained, leaning into stillness, natural light, and small, human gestures. At its core, Days Like These is about trying to hold onto the present, knowing it cannot last.
Unwritten Futures Trilogy
This is the first film in the Unwritten Futures Trilogy. The Unwritten Futures Trilogy is a collection of three short films exploring the inner lives of a generation coming of age in uncertain times. Each film offers a distinct lens: Days Like These captures the fragile nostalgia of student life on the cusp of adulthood, What Light Remains (scheduled for February 2026) examines masculinity and the quiet weight of unspoken emotion, and Unfiltered confronts the pressures of self-image in a world shaped by mirrors and screens. Together, they form a tender portrait of youth; navigating vulnerability, identity, and the search for connection in a future still being written.
