“Cinema is not only about making people dream. It’s about changing things and making people think.”
– Nadine Labaki
Solitary: No Way Out (2022)
Writer, Director, Producer
“Solitary: No Way Out” was inspired by the reports that were produced in the last decade that illustrate the decline and permanent impact solitary can have on the human mind.
Broken (2022)
Writer, Director, Producer
This is a narrative about a woman who with her husband agrees to participate in a prison reentry program whereby a family fosters former inmates upon being released from prison. The goal is to help him transition back into life after prison but they both discover that she is in her own kind of prison and that he has just as much to give to her helping her go forward in her life as she does to him. It’s inspired by Bryan Stevensons’s quote that “we are all broken, not necessarily the same level of brokenness but in our shared brokenness we connect in our humanity.”
Lake Road [Working Title] (2022)
Writer, Director, Producer
A documentary film about one woman’s crusade to build a park that she hopes will bridge two communities that might otherwise not find each other. The Texas communities, which border a lake, are Arlington, which is predominantly affluent and white, and Fort Worth, which is predominantly black and lower income. The process of keeping lower income groups part of the decision and conversation has led to some unexpected benefits: there’s a motorcycle club that’s been helping to clean and provide security for the park. Hazel Lewis Wiltz, an anomaly herself as a Black woman developer in Fort Worth, has had some of the members accompany her to the chamber of commerce allowing them to learn how communities and their businesses are built. Gentrification has taken on a bad connotation because of how it displaces people and leaves many out of the conversation. As more communities all over the country are gentrified, it raises the questions of why can’t it be done in a socially responsible or socially conscious way. Hazel Lewis Wiltz believes it can, and she’s proving it.
Chocolate Wine & Sisters (2023)
Writer, Director, Producer
The migration of my mother and her to sisters from the Midwest to the east in the 60s. In progressive cities like DC and NYC young ambitious black people balanced finding joy in life while navigating the realities of racism and explosions of violence often in response to a racist occurrence.
