Florence Welsh and Vincent Haycock to Premiere Short Film The Odyssey

Florence Welch and director Vincent Haycock will debut their short film The Odyssey in full on April 20.

The film, created for the Florence + the Machine’s new album How Big How Blue How Beautiful and starring Welch, will premiere Wednesday April 20 with a screening hosted by Florence and Vince Haycock in London.

“This is the finale of a very personal project that came from a conversation me and Vince had in the Chateau Marmont about a year and a half ago while I was writing How Big How Blue How Beautiful,” says Florence Welch.

“I was talking to him about the record and the car crash of a relationship break up I was going through. The highs and the lows of love and performance, how out of control I felt, the purgatory of heartbreak, and how I was trying to change and trying to be free. And we decided we would re-tell this story in full. We would re-claim this experience, re-imagine it and in some way perhaps I would come to understand it, to exorcise it. And so the Big Blue Odyssey began...”

The Odyssey unites each of the visual film segments created for How Big How Blue How Beautiful—'How Big How Blue How Beautiful,' 'What Kind Of Man,' 'St. Jude,' 'Ship To Wreck,' 'Queen Of Peace' and 'Delilah' as well as the seventh and final installment for 'Third Eye'—into a 47-minute, cohesive short film complete with new, connecting scenes.

The film will stream in full online for the first time ever Thursday, April 21, at 7pm on Florence’s Website florenceandthemachine.net, followed by a live Facebook Q&A with Welch and Haycock.

“The Odyssey, like the epic poem by Homer, is a journey,” says Haycock. “It’s Florence’s personal journey to find herself again after the emotional storm of a heartbreak. Like the layers of Dante’s purgatory, each song or chapter represents a battle that Florence traversed and physical landscape that embodied each songs or story. Its a metaphorical journey about escaping your demons, confronting yourself and returning to the original Florence, the dancer, the performer, the lover”

Check out the trailer for the short film below.