“My dad lost his best friend. More than his best friend, really. He lost his little brother. He’s never been one to cry or truly show any form of sadness in public, but I could see and feel how much my uncle’s sudden death really got to him. I wasn’t very good at comforting him with my words, so I did what I knew best – I created art. The point of this short was to help him heal and, in the process, help others heal by saying that life is unexpected and sudden and at times confusing; but as long as you cherish every memory and moment like the last, you’ll make the best of what life has to offer and you will bring joy to the lives of others. I hope this short makes you feel something the way that it made my dad stop holding back his tears and let them flow, healthily and therapeutically. I hope it makes you call your best friend to tell them you love them and thank them for loving you. I hope you know that this letter to my dad is a message to us all: surrounding ourselves with good only begets more goodness, and… don’t we all want just a tiny bit more goodness in our lives?”

Rising Star Award Winner Camrus Johnson’s acting career has recently taken off with leading male role of Luke Fox in The CW’s newest series BATWOMAN and Warner Brothers’ summer hit THE SUN IS ALSO A STAR, playing the role of Omar. He’s now partnered with Pedro Piccinini to create his first animated short, with his own separate live-action short film and comic book series coming soon!

Pedro Piccinini is a visual designer and animator, currently doodling his thoughts from the green mountains of Vermont.

 

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“I made this film because I’m sober and I wanted to share aspects of my experience with others. I found the process of understanding my alcoholism (as well as other addiction-related behavior) to be incredibly lonely. The only depiction of alcoholism and addiction I’d seen was extreme; and while that, of course, is the unfortunate experience of many, mine was more “hidden” in plain sight. It felt both accepted by binge drinking culture and shamed by friends and family at the same time. I spent 10 years of my life caught in the shame, depression, and loneliness of drinking and only found relief through sobriety and hearing other people’s stories. I wanted to write something in the hopes of helping someone else and creating space for conversation. Coming to Terms was the result.”

With a background in documentary television, Kait Gallagher focuses on storytelling rooted in the human experience. She uses character-driven stories to explore social-issue-related themes. Her debut narrative short, Coming to Terms, has screened at LA Shorts, Awareness Film Fest, California Women’s Film Fest and premiered online with Omeleto.

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“I think too often society closes the book on minorities who are suffering. Too often are we cast off as drunks, thieves, and savages but we are real people with real stories and real strength. I would encourage people to watch my film if they want to see a true story of a young Indigenous man who bounced back and turned those stereotypes on their head.”

Trevor Solway, Sinakson, is a Blackfoot filmmaker from Siksika Nation. Trevor attended the Independent Indigenous Digital Filmmaking program at Capilano University in 2012. He then graduated from Mount Royal University with his Bachelor’s of Communications in 2017. In 2020 Trevor was a recipient of the Mount Royal University Alumni Award for his early career success. Trevor has self-produced and directed various short narratives and documentaries that have screened at Calgary International Film Festival, ImagineNATIVE Arts and Media Festival, and Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.

Trevor is the founder of The Napi Collective, a mentorship filmmaking society based in Siksika. From 2018-2020 Trevor mentored eighteen emerging indigenous filmmakers from his community to write, direct, shoot and edit four narrative films, which screened in their community and abroad at Indigenous film festivals such as the American Indian Film Festival, LA Skins, and Moariland Film Festival.

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“We believe in the spirit of being helpful. And we believe that it’s difficult to help someone else in a meaningful way. You have to be tuned in to who they are and what their needs are. We wanted to highlight what true helpfulness looks like.”

Sindha Agha is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker who has quickly made a name for herself by creating viral digital pieces with distinct & vibrant visuals. Sindha kicked off her career by writing & directing “Birth Control Your Own Adventure,” a tragicomic short acquired by The New York Times. “Birth Control” quickly reached 12.5 million organic Facebook views and was nominated for a 2019 News & Documentary Emmy. The film was also accepted into Tribeca and Palm Springs Film Festivals as a part of their official selection.

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“Almost all of the stories I’ve been telling with my films have a strong core of family through it. This has only occurred to me in hindsight. When I’m making something I don’t set out with a goal, or a theme to reach. I become a conduit for these stories and I let them flow through me without a filter. I can’t afford any therapy sessions, but the process of filmmaking has taken up that role for me. It helps me better understand myself and the world I live in.

In more introspection I’ve come to realize this: both my growth as an artist and the growing awareness of my role as an immigrant living in America has coincidentally blossomed together.

Leaving my family back in India to immigrate to a “better” life in America without the option to say no, and all of a sudden being forced to become used to a new family and environment created a fractured sense of self and questions about the concept of family itself. At the time I didn’t know how to express these very strong feelings within me, and often they would manifest themselves in sporadic, short, and very intense episodes of depression. The push and pull it created inside me had only found an outlet when I discovered filmmaking.

For me the bulk of the process of filmmaking happens in my subconscious without me even knowing “it” is happening. The process for “This is closest to how the last weeks of March felt like” was no different.

It was during the first month of the pandemic where the whole world was in panic mode. The colleges had begun to send students back, and the whole campus was covered in a gloomy aura. That was when a very loose idea for this film came to me.

At the time I had decided to stay on campus, because there was no way for me to be 100% sure that I didn’t have COVID-19. The last thing I wanted was to unknowingly spread the virus to my father. The campus was barren and the financial situation at my home was seemingly becoming worse and worse every day. There was a real feeling of the end of the times for me, and in that state of my mind I did the only thing that could’ve been done. I wrote about it, not knowing that a month later I would shoot it. The script was written based on real phone calls I had with my dad. Acting through the script with my father and reliving those hard conversations again with him helped us to regain some sense of control over a situation we were losing control over.

Since making that film the relationship with my father has began to change, even though it’s still very much in progress, it’ progress. We both try to keep each other in check in terms of not pushing ourselves too hard, reminding each other to take a breather and relax, and always being honest about how we are doing. Compared to before where the way we showed each other affection was lying about how happy we were, as to not worry the other person.

This is filmmaking for me, a place for me to go and hope to find myself. Hope to better understand my circumstances, hope to better understand the world I live in, and hope to better understand the people I love and care about.”

Kunga is a writer, director and cinematographer hailing from Queens, NY. His works have all carried strong undercurrents of identity and family. By showcasing the hyper specific and unique experiences of a Tibetan immigrant living in America, he hopes to oxymoronically also explore the universal lows and highs everyone faces.

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“I don’t think it’s acknowledged enough how absolutely terrifying to be an artist. Being vulnerable on screen can feel like the end all be all. I’ve always struggled as an artist and as a person with loving myself – I find I am constantly my own worst enemy. This story is my attempt to translate the internal battlefield that rocks around my head into a film. This is how I managed, by creating a film I believe wholeheartedly is worth telling. I hope it makes you laugh…and if it makes you cry (I’ll be on cloud nine) but if anything, I hope it makes you feel something because my heart and soul is imbued in every single frame. Thank you so much for watching, it truly means the world to me. Especially through the context of the UnLonely Film Festival, I feel so many people feel isolated in their own lives. This film was a look at that idea and an attempt to tackle it with a sensitive but comedic hand. I wanted to remind an audience that you cannot love others until you love yourself, and the character that was born out of that idea was Eileen.”

Aussie-born, now L.A. based. Dan Benjamin Lesser enjoys telling stories with themes of identity, self-love and anything that can get a cheeky giggle out of an audience. Whether narrative, branded, or music video work Dan is striving to create authentic, visually dynamic, and kinetic work.

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