A glance. A shared secret. A silence so charged it hums.

Capturing yearning in words is no easy task, but for Dublin-based director Tara Devi, imagery says everything.

Released on March 20th, CATFIGHT is a short narrative piece that explores sapphic desire through the unexpected framework of a boxing match. Two rival women meet in the ring, and across four rounds, their dynamic shifts from restraint to surrender. What unfolds is not a spectacle of violence, but a slow, deliberate build of tension.

In CATFIGHT, combat becomes a language for intimacy. The blows land, but what resonates is the emotional undercurrent: confusion, frustration, passion, and ultimately, recognition.

Devi, whose work spans from music videos to Super Bowl commercials, has built a reputation for movement-led storytelling that transforms physicality into vulnerability. The initial spark for CATFIGHT came from the Heated Rivalry series, which left a lasting impression on her creative psyche.

“What stayed with me wasn’t the secrecy or the spectacle, but the tension—the quiet, relentless yearning between two people who can’t look away from each other. The way desire could exist in silence and still feel explosive.”

That sense of “quiet explosion” sits at the core of CATFIGHT.

As a queer director, Devi is intentional in how she portrays intimacy between women and actively resists the tendency to soften, sensationalise, or over-explain it.

“CATFIGHT functions without dialogue, allowing the body to carry narrative weight. It trusts the viewer to sit inside the tension rather than be guided through it.”

The film’s sonic landscape is crafted by Croatian-born, London-based artist Niara, whose genre-blurring sound mirrors the film’s shifting emotional terrain. Niara’s discography is ethereal, rhythmic and fluid, and the new music score developed for CATFIGHT is certain to enhance the blurred lines between rivalry and desire.

Beyond the screen, CATFIGHT expands into a digital zine. Combining still photography, collage, and text, the zine is what Devi calls a documentation of desire “as both performance and archive”.

At its core, CATFIGHT is about what happens between potential lovers before anything is spoken.

“CATFIGHT is about yearning.

About recognition before touch.

About desire that refuses to be polite.”

— Tara Devi