Time Was (2025) by Jade Winters

The British Micro-Budget Queer Ghost Story Where Renovating a London House Becomes a Slow-Burn Lesbian Romance With a Supernatural Twist

Beth is nursing a break-up and diving into work — renovating a small London house to resell. Her best friend Amelia is her support system. Strange presences in the house begin to disturb her sleep and her confidence in her own sanity. Then Melissa, a local interior designer, responds to Beth's renovation blog and arrives to help. Their connection is immediate and complicated. What Beth doesn't yet understand is that Melissa's involvement with the house goes deeper than professional interest, and that the supernatural disturbances are connected to both of them in ways neither anticipated. Written and directed by Jade Winters — British writer-director, bestselling novelist, founder of Wicked Winters Films, with One Four Three (2021) as her previous feature. Starring Eleanor Barr-Sim and Ella McCready. 73 minutes. UK release April 17, 2025. Available free on Tubi, and to rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video.

Why It Is Trending: A 73-Minute British Indie Queer Ghost Romance From the Director of One Four Three — With a Slow-Burn Central Chemistry That Drives Discovery in the Sapphic Streaming Community

Jade Winters has built a consistent micro-budget queer British filmography — short films, One Four Three (2021), and now Time Was — that has established her as a reliable name within the sapphic film discovery circuit. Ella McCready, who has appeared in all of Winters's shorts and in One Four Three, returns as her consistent on-screen collaborator and acknowledged creative muse. One Film Fan called it "a story that moves you far more than you'd initially anticipate." The sapphic streaming community on Letterboxd describes the Barr-Sim and McCready chemistry as the film's most consistently effective element — the stargazing scene in particular cited as genuinely sweet. Tubi's free streaming availability gives the film its widest discovery pathway within the queer streaming audience that uses the platform as a primary source for LGBTQ+ content.

Elements Driving the Trend: The Barr-Sim-McCready Central Chemistry, the Supernatural Twist Structure, and the 73-Minute Accessible Runtime

• The slow-burn romance between Beth and Melissa — building across the renovation premise with the supernatural disturbances as the structural tension that complicates their attraction — is the film's most praised element across all viewer responses.

• McCready's Melissa — enigmatic, wistful, magnetically cautious in ways Beth cannot understand — is described by One Film Fan as "the more mysterious force in the mix, with a wistful gaze, body language, and magnetic demeanour leading the way."

• Barr-Sim's Beth — heartbreakingly endearing, a young woman who wants only to make her mark and know she will be truly seen and loved — is the film's emotional anchor, carried with what One Film Fan called "genuine emotional upheaval and energetic undercurrents" delivered with well-executed poise.

• The 73-minute runtime is the film's most commercially smart formal decision — accessible to the queer streaming audience that discovers content on Tubi and Prime Video, and disciplined enough to sustain the slow-burn without outstaying its welcome.

Virality: The Sapphic Streaming Community and the Ghost-Romance Genre Combination

• The queer ghost romance is a specific and underserved genre combination — Letterboxd noted "this movie is a first of its kind" within the sapphic film space — giving it discovery traction within a community actively seeking genre variety in queer representation.

• Winters's established relationship with McCready — confirmed across multiple short films and now two features — gives the film a specific creative continuity that the director's existing audience responds to as a quality signal.

Critics Reception: Warmly Received by Specialist Reviewers — the Slow-Burn and Emotional Depth the Consensus Strengths

• One Film Fan — an amazing subtlety and slow burn that somewhat belies the tangible emotive depth of character and story; Barr-Sim heartbreakingly endearing; McCready's wistful gaze and magnetic demeanour; moves you far more than you'd initially anticipate; the LGBTQ-based thematic foundation rises above to speak to universal themes of human love and connection.

• IMDb (hamish-60567, score 9) — satisfying ghost and romance story; excellent two-hander with both performances strong; a nice bit of creepy and romantic atmosphere; a ghost story with a touching lesbian romance at its heart.

• Letterboxd — Melissa and Beth have amazing chemistry, the stargazing scene genuinely sweet; different from most lesbian storylines typically seen; worth a watch. IMDb 5.7 from 69 viewers.

Awards and Recognitions: No Awards — UK Release April 17, 2025 — Free on Tubi, Available on Amazon Prime Video

• No awards. No nominations. UK release April 17, 2025. Wicked Winters Films. Free on Tubi. Rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video.

Director and Cast: A British Queer Filmmaker Building a Consistent Micro-Budget Sapphic Cinema — With Her Established On-Screen Creative Partnership at the Film's Core

• Jade Winters — novelist, writer-director, founder of Wicked Winters Films — has built a distinctive micro-budget queer British cinema over multiple short films and two features. Her consistent formal approach — slow burn, emotional depth, naturalistic performance — gives the film its most reliable tonal foundation.

• Eleanor Barr-Sim (Beth) — the film's emotional anchor — delivers what One Film Fan described as a performance of genuine emotional upheaval and well-executed poise, making Beth someone the audience roots for across every stage of her confusion and longing.

• Ella McCready (Melissa) — Winters's confirmed on-screen muse, present across all her shorts and now both features — brings the enigmatic, cautious energy that the character's supernatural complications require, with what reviewers consistently described as magnetic screen presence.

• Bryony Miller (Amelia) and Kathryn O'Reilly (Cara) provide the supporting emotional infrastructure that gives Beth's world its human context beyond the central romance.

Conclusion: A Micro-Budget British Queer Ghost Romance That Delivers Its Central Chemistry With Warmth and Restraint — and Confirms Winters's Consistent Creative Voice in Sapphic Independent Cinema

The Tubi free streaming availability gives the film its most reliable discovery pathway to the sapphic streaming audience it was made for. The Barr-Sim-McCready chemistry is the film's most commercially durable asset. The 73-minute runtime is its most viewer-friendly formal decision.

What Movie Trend Is Followed: The British Sapphic Indie Drama Combines Slow-Burn Lesbian Romance With Supernatural Elements — Offering Genre Variety to an Underserved LGBTQ+ Audience

Time Was belongs to the micro-budget British queer romance tradition — One Four Three and Winters's own short film catalogue as the immediate context — while adding the supernatural ghost story as a genre layer that differentiates it from conventional sapphic drama. The slow-burn structure, the renovation premise as a metaphor for self-renewal, and the mystery of Melissa's cautious investment in both Beth and the house give the film the genre hybrid quality that Letterboxd viewers recognised as formally distinctive within the sapphic film space.

Trend Drivers: The Queer Ghost Romance Genre Combination, the Renovation Premise as Metaphor, and the Mystery Structure's Slow Reveal

• The ghost story as a framing device for queer romance is the film's most formally original contribution — the supernatural disturbances are not obstacles to the romance but the mechanism through which its emotional truth is revealed.

• The renovation premise — Beth restoring an old house to resell it — functions as the film's most accessible metaphor: the woman rebuilding her life after a break-up, the house that holds someone else's history, the process of making something new out of what was left behind.

• Melissa's deliberate cautiousness — the reason for which the film withholds until the twist — gives the central romance its most commercially interesting structural tension: an attraction that is clear to the audience and complicated by factors only Melissa understands.

• Winters's consistent formal approach — slow burn, naturalistic performance, emotional depth — gives the 73-minute structure its most reliable pacing architecture.

What Is Influencing Trend: The Sapphic Streaming Discovery Circuit and Wicked Winters Films' Genre Experimentation

• The sapphic streaming community on Tubi, Amazon Prime, and Letterboxd has established a consistent discovery circuit for micro-budget queer British independent films — Winters's previous work has already built recognition within this community.

• The queer ghost romance genre combination is specifically underrepresented in sapphic cinema — Time Was occupies a niche that the audience was actively seeking, as confirmed by the Letterboxd "first of its kind" citation.

• Winters's novelist background gives the film's screenplay its most distinctive structural quality: the twist-based reveal architecture and the slow withholding of Melissa's full context are techniques that translate directly from literary thriller into genre cinema.

Macro Trends Influencing: LGBTQ+ Genre Representation and the Sapphic Horror-Romance Crossover

• The demand for LGBTQ+ content within genre categories beyond drama and romance — supernatural, horror, thriller — is one of the sapphic film community's most consistently expressed discovery motivations.

• The British indie film tradition of low-budget genre hybrids — ghost stories told through intimate human drama — gives the film a formal lineage that the UK market and the international sapphic audience both respond to.

• The streaming-first micro-budget model has established a viable distribution pathway for films that would previously have had no commercial route beyond festival circuits.

Consumer Trends Influencing: Tubi's LGBTQ+ Free Streaming Audience and the Letterboxd Sapphic Discovery Community

• Tubi's free streaming model gives the film the widest possible access within the sapphic streaming audience — a demographic that actively seeks LGBTQ+ content on free platforms and generates word of mouth through Letterboxd and social media.

• The Letterboxd sapphic film community is one of the most active and loyal genre-specific discovery communities in streaming — a film that one reviewer describes as "different from most lesbian storylines" will circulate within that community independently of conventional marketing.

• The 73-minute runtime makes the film an ideal single-sitting discovery choice for the streaming audience that encounters it through platform recommendation or community word of mouth.

Audience Analysis: Sapphic Film Streaming Audiences, Queer Horror-Romance Genre Viewers, and Jade Winters's Existing Fanbase

The core audience is 20–45 — sapphic film streaming community members who seek queer content on Tubi and Prime Video, queer genre film viewers who want LGBTQ+ representation within supernatural and horror-adjacent premises, and Jade Winters's existing audience from One Four Three and her short film catalogue. The Barr-Sim-McCready chemistry is the primary word-of-mouth driver. The ghost romance genre combination is the primary discovery hook.

Conclusion: A Genre-Hybrid Sapphic Indie That Earns Its Discovery Traction Through Central Chemistry and Formal Originality Within an Underserved Genre Space

Time Was earns its place in the sapphic streaming circuit through the specific quality that the community values most: a central romance that feels genuine, a genre combination it had not seen before, and a formal restraint that trusts the audience to carry the emotional weight.

Final Verdict: A Warmly Executed British Sapphic Ghost Romance That Delivers Its Central Chemistry With Genuine Feeling — and Confirms Jade Winters as a Consistent and Distinctive Voice in Micro-Budget Queer British Cinema

Winters delivers a 73-minute feature of formal discipline and emotional warmth — the slow burn is real, the central chemistry is the film's most reliable foundation, and the supernatural premise is used as a structural device for emotional revelation rather than as a genre end in itself. Barr-Sim and McCready carry the film with the naturalistic conviction that Winters's directing approach consistently elicits from her cast.

Audience Relevance: For Sapphic Film Audiences Who Value Central Chemistry and Genre Novelty Over Production Scale

Works best for viewers who approach queer cinema through the specific pleasure of a well-executed slow-burn romance — the sapphic film community that uses Tubi and Letterboxd as primary discovery platforms, and viewers who respond to the ghost romance genre combination as a formal novelty within LGBTQ+ representation.

What Is the Message of Movie: The House You're Restoring and the Person You're Falling For Are Both Holding Secrets — and Both Will Change You More Than You Anticipated

The renovation premise and the ghost story converge on the same thematic argument: that restoration requires confronting what was left behind, that love arrives with its own history, and that the most inexplicable attractions are often the ones most worth understanding.

Relevance to Audience: A Film That Gives the Sapphic Genre Audience a Combination It Was Actively Seeking and Rarely Finds

The queer ghost romance is specifically underrepresented in sapphic cinema — Time Was occupies that space with warmth and formal intention, giving an audience that actively seeks genre variety in LGBTQ+ representation exactly the combination it had not found elsewhere.

Social Relevance: Micro-Budget British Queer Cinema as a Cultural Necessity — and the Streaming Platforms That Make Its Discovery Possible

The free Tubi availability and Prime Video presence give Time Was a distribution reach that micro-budget queer British films have historically been unable to access — confirming that the streaming model has opened a genuine commercial pathway for independent sapphic cinema that festival circuits alone could not sustain.

Performance: Barr-Sim Grounds the Film's Emotional Architecture — McCready's Enigmatic Caution Makes the Romance's Complications Entirely Legible

Barr-Sim's Beth — heartbreakingly endearing, emotionally present, a woman whose longing to be truly seen and loved makes her every confusion and hesitation deeply sympathetic — is the film's emotional anchor across its full runtime. McCready's Melissa — wistful, magnetically cautious, holding more than she can reveal — is the film's most formally interesting performance: every gesture calibrated toward a truth the film withholds until the right moment.

Legacy: A Formally Consistent Entry in Jade Winters's Growing Sapphic British Cinema Catalogue — and the Film That Confirmed Barr-Sim as a Performer Worth Following

Time Was confirms Winters's formal identity as a filmmaker of emotional restraint and sapphic storytelling authenticity — and introduces Barr-Sim as a screen presence capable of carrying a film's complete emotional weight with naturalness and poise. The Winters-McCready creative partnership, confirmed across all her work, remains one of British micro-budget queer cinema's most productive and most consistent.

Success: No Awards — UK Release April 17, 2025 — Free on Tubi, Rent or Purchase on Amazon Prime Video

• No awards. UK release April 17, 2025. Wicked Winters Films production. Free on Tubi. Available to rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video.

The Tubi free streaming model delivered the discovery audience. The sapphic streaming community's word of mouth sustained it. The central chemistry made it worth recommending.

Time Was proves that the most affecting queer genre films are the ones where the ghost story and the love story are not two separate things — and that Jade Winters understands both with equal precision.

Insights: A 73-minute micro-budget British sapphic ghost romance that delivers its central chemistry with warmth and formal restraint — the genre combination is genuinely novel within the sapphic film space, the Barr-Sim-McCready central pairing is the film's most reliable asset, and the Tubi free streaming model gives it the widest possible discovery reach within the community it was made for. Industry Insight: Winters's consistent micro-budget production model — Wicked Winters Films, the McCready creative partnership, the streaming-first distribution strategy — confirms that British independent sapphic cinema has developed a viable commercial pathway on free and rental streaming platforms that bypasses the festival gatekeeping that previously limited its reach. Audience Insight: The sapphic Letterboxd and Tubi community is the film's most reliable discovery engine — a viewer demographic that actively seeks queer genre content, generates organic word of mouth, and specifically values the "first of its kind" quality that Time Was brings to the ghost romance combination within sapphic cinema. Social Insight: A film that places a lesbian romance at the structural centre of a British ghost story — treating the supernatural not as a metaphor for queerness but as the mechanism through which emotional truth is revealed — is making one of the sapphic genre film space's most formally specific and most culturally necessary contributions to LGBTQ+ representation in independent British cinema. Cultural Insight: Time Was positions Jade Winters as the most consistent and most formally distinctive voice in micro-budget British sapphic cinema — with a growing catalogue, a confirmed creative partnership with McCready, and a distribution model that gives her work the widest possible access to the community that most values it.

Conclusion: A Warmly Crafted British Sapphic Ghost Romance That Earns Its Genre Discovery Traction — and Confirms Both Its Director and Its Lead Performances as Creative Voices Worth Following

The slow burn delivers. The chemistry is real. The ghost story serves the romance rather than competing with it. Jade Winters's formal consistency, Eleanor Barr-Sim's emotional authority, and Ella McCready's magnetic restraint combine to give Time Was a genuine and earned place within the sapphic independent cinema that its community actively seeks out and sustains through word of mouth.

Summary: One Haunted London House, One Interior Designer With Secrets, and a Romance That Changes Everything

• Movie themes: Romantic renewal after loss, the ghost story as a mechanism for emotional revelation, the renovation of a house as a metaphor for the renovation of self, the patience required by a love that arrives with its own unresolved history, and the specific warmth of finding someone who genuinely sees you.

• Movie director: Jade Winters — novelist, writer-director, founder of Wicked Winters Films — brings the slow-burn emotional discipline and naturalistic performance approach of her growing sapphic British cinema catalogue to a 73-minute ghost romance that is both genre-novel and formally consistent with her established creative identity.

• Top casting: Barr-Sim's Beth is the film's complete emotional anchor — endearing, vulnerable, and genuinely affecting. McCready's Melissa brings the enigmatic caution that the supernatural structure requires, with a magnetic screen presence confirmed across Winters's entire creative catalogue.

• Awards and recognition: No awards. No nominations. UK release April 17, 2025. Wicked Winters Films.

• Why to watch: The sapphic ghost romance that occupies a genre space Letterboxd viewers called "first of its kind" — a 73-minute British indie that delivers genuine central chemistry, a formally satisfying supernatural twist, and the specific emotional warmth of a love story told with restraint and conviction.

• Key success factors: The Barr-Sim-McCready central chemistry plus the novel queer ghost romance genre combination plus the 73-minute accessible runtime plus Tubi's free streaming availability plus the sapphic Letterboxd community's active word-of-mouth culture plus Winters's established creative reputation within the micro-budget queer British film space.

• Where to watch: Free on Tubi. Rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video.

Link to watch: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/time-was (US), https://www.justwatch.com/uk/movie/time-was (UK), https://www.justwatch.com/de/Film/time-was (Germany)

Conclusion: A Genre-Novel Sapphic Indie That Gives Its Audience a Combination It Was Actively Seeking — Delivered With Emotional Warmth, Creative Consistency, and the Central Chemistry That Makes Every Other Quality Worthwhile

Time Was earns its discovery traction through the specific quality its audience values most: a romance that feels true, a genre it hadn't seen in this form before, and two performances that make the 73 minutes feel like exactly the right amount of time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch0CZZutMkM