Above The Nerve.
A home for stories that move people.
“If your Nerve, deny you —
Go above your Nerve —”
Emily Dickinson
The house
Above The Nerve makes films about what happens inside us, and gives it a body.
Founded by writer and director Charlotte Verminck, the house works where cinema, fashion, and movement meet. Every work begins with an inner state, a thought, a fear, a turning point, and finds its form through the body, the image and what is worn.
The name comes from Emily Dickinson: if your nerve denies you, go above it.
It is what every film here is about: the moment a person moves past their own fear. And it is how the house was built: without waiting for permission.
A note from Charlotte
Thoughts are invisible, yet they shape everything: how we move, how we hold ourselves, what we dare. My work makes them visible, in a gesture, a garment, the way a body crosses a frame.
I have been editing since I was ten, and I made my first films largely by myself. That is how I learned what each craft asks of the people who practise it, and why today I can carry one vision through many hands.
On other people’s sets, I learned that the way a film is made ends up in the film. On mine, everyone is seen. In the end, that is what I make films for: so that whoever is watching feels seen too.
Movement as language
Choreography is not decoration but a way of making the inner life visible. Thought, tension, and transformation are carried by the body. With actors, it becomes a way into character.
Craftsmanship
Every work is made with care at every stage, from the first word to the final cut, and shaped in close dialogue with the artists, houses, and collaborators it is made with.
Work that stays
The films stay with people long after they end. Audiences describe feeling seen, and screenings open conversations that continue well beyond the room.
Selected work
Mind of Thoughts
An independently financed short film, made across Belgium, France, and the Netherlands with fifty-five cast and crew.
World premiere at the 25th Beverly Hills Film Festival. Opening film of the Ferrara Film Festival. Awards in Los Angeles, New York, and Barcelona.
Pathless
The visual poem in which the house’s language first took shape. Recognised internationally and still screening at festivals.
Creative direction
Still images that set out the visual language of the films: identity explored through gesture, styling and what is worn. Including a portrait series with Ozark Henry, wardrobe by Ann Demeulemeester.
The house makes
Narrative cinema
Original fiction for cinema.
Films for houses
Stories for fashion and luxury houses, in which the pieces are not shown but lived.
Screening and conversation
Mind of Thoughts, presented with a live conversation.
Commissions
A limited number of commissions are accepted each year: narrative films and film campaigns for fashion and luxury houses.