{"id":13042,"date":"2026-09-25T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/?p=13042"},"modified":"2026-09-18T13:37:58","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T13:37:58","slug":"some-feelings-dont-stay-buried","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/some-feelings-dont-stay-buried\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Feelings Don\u2019t Stay Buried"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>7 Minute, 46 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

MOVIE REVIEWS
\nLove Song<\/strong>
\n –  <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Genre: <\/strong>Romance, Drama, Short
\nYear Released: <\/strong>2026
\nRuntime:<\/strong> 29m
\nDirector: <\/strong>Love Nafi
\nWriter: <\/strong>Love Nafi
\nCast: <\/strong>Mohamed Williams, Okema T. Moore, Simone Posey, Adrian Arthur, Montana Monroe Jenkins, Ava Barnett, Taylen Washington
\nWhere to Watch:<\/strong> shown at the 2026 American Black Film Festival<\/p>\n

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RAVING REVIEW: <\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>Nostalgia has a nasty habit of showing us only the parts we miss. LOVE SONG builds romantic conflict around that idea, putting a married father face-to-face with a woman connected to another version of his life, then refusing to make a decision as simple as choosing between two people. Mathieu isn't only remembering Belinda when she pops back into his life. He's remembering who he was when she was part of his life, and that gives this 29-minute short considerably more to think about than you’d expect.<\/p>\n

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Mohamed Williams plays Mathieu, a music producer who “runs into” Belinda during his morning commute, reconnecting him with his former flame, played by Okema T. Moore. He's now married to Tara (Simone Posey), has a family, and has responsibilities that obviously weren’t part of their relationship. Seeing Belinda again brings feelings back, but writer-director Nofisat "Love Nafi" Almaroof is less interested in whether Mathieu can rekindle an old romance than in what that attraction says about everything he believes he's sacrificed along the way.<\/p>\n

That makes Mathieu a difficult character by design. He's a husband and father with feelings for someone outside his marriage, and LOVE SONG doesn't ask us to pretend that his responsibility disappears because the reunion feels meaningful. At the same time, Nafi resists reducing him to just the selfish guy threatening a perfectly good life because an ex walked back into frame. Frustration underlies his behavior, along with a sense that parts of his creative identity and freedom have gradually been pushed aside by the person he believes he's supposed to be.<\/p>\n

Williams handles that contradiction without trying too hard to make Mathieu sympathetic. There's warmth in his scenes with Belinda, but also hesitation that reminds us he knows exactly what crossing certain boundaries could cost him. His best moments come when attraction and discomfort exist at the same time, allowing Mathieu to look happy around her without erasing the complications waiting outside that reunion.<\/p>\n

Moore has an equally important job because Belinda can't simply function as temptation. The relationship needs to feel like something that mattered enough to throw Mathieu off balance, and Moore creates that familiarity quite well. She and Williams have a comfort together that sells history without flashbacks or heavy exposition. Their connection feels like two people who don't need to rediscover every reason they once cared about each other.<\/p>\n

Music does a lot of the work alongside them. Mathieu's profession makes it an obvious part of the story, but LOVE SONG also treats music as a link between memory and identity. Songs can preserve emotions with an efficiency people rarely manage on their own, bringing back a time, place, or relationship before you've had a chance to decide whether you actually wanted to revisit it. Nafi uses that connection to tie Belinda's return not only to an old romance but to Mathieu's abandoned creative ambitions.<\/p>\n

That makes LOVE SONG more interesting than a straightforward infidelity story. Mathieu seems to be mourning several things at once, and Belinda happens to represent a lot of them. He misses her, but he also misses possibility, music, spontaneity, and a period when his future wasn’t just a list of obligations. Those feelings aren't automatically an indictment of his family, nor do they excuse potentially hurting them. The movie understands that someone can love the life they've built while still grieving parts of themselves that disappeared in the process.<\/p>\n

Simone Posey's Tara occupies a difficult position within the story. She needs to represent Mathieu's present without becoming an obstacle placed between him and some supposedly purer former love. LOVE SONG is at its weakest whenever its short runtime limits how it can explore her perspective, because the emotional equation becomes much more complicated when Tara is understood as a person rather than simply Mathieu's responsibility waiting at home. Unfortunately, that imbalance is difficult to avoid in less than half an hour, particularly because Mathieu and Belinda's reunion demands so much attention. A few more minutes with Mathieu's marriage could have made his conflict even stronger. We understand what Belinda awakens in him, but seeing what already exists between Mathieu, Tara, and their daughter would give the audience more details about whether he's genuinely trapped by expectations or simply romanticizing a past that no longer has to survive everyday pressures.<\/p>\n

Nafi's restraint helps keep that question from turning into melodrama. LOVE SONG doesn't constantly push its characters toward explosive declarations, and conversations can stay quieter than the emotions underneath. That approach fits a story about adults who understand that saying exactly what they want can cause permanent damage. Nobody needs to scream for the consequences to feel significant.<\/p>\n

It's also refreshing that Mathieu's confusion isn't treated as proof that his love for his family wasn’t there. Movies involving exes often make the current relationship feel so terrible that audiences can comfortably root for the reunion, effectively removing the moral complication that made the premise interesting. LOVE SONG never gives Mathieu that escape route. The problem isn't that one life is wrong and another right. It's that different choices can contain different forms of love while remaining incompatible with one another.<\/p>\n

Nafi's own background makes her move into this kind of filmmaking particularly interesting. A former family medicine physician and Army major, she approaches LOVE SONG with an interest in identity that goes beyond romance. Her characters negotiate cultural and family roles, ambition, and their own understanding of fulfillment, and those journeys give the movie enough substance to justify the seriousness with which it treats what could otherwise sound like a much more insignificant encounter.<\/p>\n

LOVE SONG places a vulnerable Black husband and father at the center of an emotional story that lets him be uncertain, romantic, frustrated, and flawed without reducing him to one recognizable stereotype. Mathieu isn't easy to defend, but he doesn't need to be. Letting him make uncomfortable choices while still treating his feelings seriously is much more interesting than designing a protagonist who can never disappoint the audience.<\/p>\n

At times, the 29-minute format works against Nafi's ambitions. The film juggles marriage, lost love, parenthood, artistic fulfillment, masculinity, and whether people can honor another version of themselves without destroying what they've built. That's a lot, and some ideas inevitably get more attention than others. Tara is the most straightforward casualty of that, while a few emotional developments circle back faster than they might in a feature.<\/p>\n

Extending LOVE SONG into two hours might also remove some of what makes it work the way it does. The encounter has the disruptive quality of something unexpected that forces years of buried questions to the surface at once. Nafi captures that without turning it into romantic wish fulfillment, leaving Mathieu caught between the comfort of memory and the consequences of acting on it.<\/p>\n

LOVE SONG works best when it recognizes that the person Mathieu misses and the life Mathieu misses aren't necessarily the same thing. Belinda brings both back into focus, and Williams and Moore give their connection enough warmth to make his confusion believable even when his choices become uncomfortable. The short could give Tara more room and dig further into the marriage at stake. Nafi's refusal to force Mathieu into the good-or-bad-guy role keeps the story from becoming another fantasy about escaping adulthood for the one who got away.<\/p>\n

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[photo courtesy of LOVE NAFI PRODUCTIONS, SIERRANOVA PRODUCTIONS]<\/em><\/p>\n

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MOVIE REVIEWS Love Song  –      Genre: Romance, Drama, Short Year Released: 2026 Runtime: 29m Director: Love Nafi Writer: Love Nafi Cast: Mohamed Williams, Okema T. Moore, Simone Posey, Adrian Arthur, Montana Monroe Jenkins, Ava Barnett, Taylen Washington Where to Watch: shown at the 2026 American Black Film Festival RAVING REVIEW: Nostalgia has a nasty habit of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/img\/0367\/0367748.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t