It’s the winter of 1529. Isabelle has been sent to a nunnery as the daughter of a political and religious dissident and now lives a thankless life of solitude. William is the son of establishmentarians and has become a monk. The two have fallen in love...

Independent film-makers from Watford and London have launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise the funds to produce their short film, The Cross, which is based on folklore and which writer and director Siobhan Schwartzberg, from Walthamstow, and producer Emily Munster, from Northwood, describe as a ‘cross between Romeo and Juliet and Joan of Arc’ and a ‘tragic love story that is concerned with the manifestations of oppression’.

“Siobhan’s come up with such a good idea,” says Emily, 21. “I don’t think there are any other films about that are centred around a nun in the 16th Century!

“It’s such a detailed story, for a short film there are so many layers. I think the fact that we’ve got that into a 20-minute film and on a relatively short budget is amazing.”

Siobhan, 26, spent a year researching life in a medieval nunnery and has incorporated painstaking details from the period into the script.

The film will be a grittier and more realistic vision of what life was like for a nun in 1529, and the film’s style is influenced by Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante.

Emily, Siobhan and the rest of the team – they already have their actors on board, who are happy to work for expenses – need £6,950 if the project is to get off the ground. If it’s made, shooting should start in January 2014 and the film will be around 20 minutes in length. They plan to enter it into all the major film festivals, including Sundance, London and Edinburgh.

The majority of the budget will be spent on locations and equipment – recreating the 16th Century will be costly – with the rest divided between catering, cast and crew’s expenses, costumes and the art department.

If you choose to donate to the project, there are a range of rewards – from a digitalised section of the storyboard or script signed by the director, to a DVD or soundtrack, to an invitation to the wrap party or a Q&A with the cast at a London screening, all the way up to a producer or associate producer credit.

"We’re really hopeful we can raise the money," Emily continues. “It’s such a good story, I think it’s well worth the money.”