FilmStew.com

Documentary Revisits Horrific 1968 Abduction and Murder Spree in Pennsylvania

2026-08-07T08:05:27.725-07:00

First came the book, in May 2023, by Todd Bromley, titled Depravity in the Darkness.

Now arrives the 70-minute documentary A Murder in Mercer, about the abduction at gunpoint in March, 1968 outside of a restaurant in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania of four college students (two couples). Mike Frick, weeks away from graduation at the Virginia Military Institute, was tortured and murdered in the woods. The remaining three were also held captive in a home and molested, tortured, until the other male student freed himself and escaped along with the two young women (aged 19 and 21). Four local men (Kenny Perrine, Art McConnell, Donnie Hosack, Gary Batley), drunk and-or on drugs at the time of the crimes, were eventually captured, tried and sentenced to life in prison.

"The two most famous murders at that time were the Holcomb, Kansas murders which Truman Capote wrote about and the 1969 Manson Family murders," Bromley told the Armstrong Neighborhood Channel. "This crime falls in between those two and it's just as heinous as those crimes, it really is."

"It involves kidnapping, sexual assault, murder, one of the largest manhunts in Pennsylvania state history up to that time, a police shootout during the capture, a prison escape," he added. "It doesn't need to be sensationalized. It's pretty unbelievable the way it happened."

After premiering in June at the inaugural McDonough Storytellers Film Festival in Georgia, A Murder in Mercer (the title is a reference to Mercer County) is now set for a series of local screenings, beginning with a showing August 15th in Indiana, Pennsylvania. Subsequent events will be held in Worthington August 22nd and Slippery Rock September 17th.

Bromley, who was born in 1965 in the same hospital in Grove City that the victims would be brought to three years later, pitched Slippery Rock University the idea of making a documentary using his book. That led to the A Murder in Mercer film, co-directed by associate professor Brittany Fleming and one of her students, James Cressley. Bromley liked the idea that the university where the coeds were from (then known as Slippery Rock Normal School) wound up being involved in the documentary project.

Bromley, who wrote two previous books about the outdoors and founded a magazine, Crossbow, that he sold to a large New York publishing group in late 2022, said he was struck while researching Depravity in the Darkness by the fortitude of the two young women. Not just during the crimes themselves, but also at the subsequent trial, when defense attorneys went at them in a way that is hard to fathom by today's #MeToo standards.

[A Murder in Mercer official website]

Previously on FilmStew:

Questions About Late 1960s Michigan Serial Killings Continue to Linger

A Whale of a Black American Hero Tale

2026-08-05T08:22:02.195-07:00

It all started for Anita Allison at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts, so it's only fitting that her 14-minute short film is set to premiere there.

Cuffe: Taxed, debuting August 13th, is all about Paul Cuffe, who, after being born free in 1759, became the first Black captain of a fleet of whaling ships and also fought against taxation without representation during the Revolutionary War. Born on Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts, Cuffe was the son of a Wampanoag (Native American) mother and a Black, freed-slave father.

Cuffe was one of the richest men of color in the early United States, putting money back into the community, opening schools and sitting at one point with President James Madison, becoming the first Black man to sit with an active president. Allison first learned about Cuffe when she visited the New Bedford Whaling Museum in 2022. Though Cuffe himself was not mulatto, his mixed-race story resonated for Allison.

"The tragic mulatto: not Black, not White, adored, hated, rootless and doomed," Allison explained in her Artist's Statement. "That’s how I saw myself reflected in history when I was in middle school. I wasn’t tragic. What was tragic was the lack of people like me in history books. Cuffe: Taxed is all about transforming the “tragic mulatto” into a never-seen-before American hero."

Set in 1779 and played as a comedy adventure, the film stars Tyson Brown as Cuffe and Salustiano Berrios as his brother-in-law Michael Wainer. The pair work together to sneak food past British patrols to starving residents in Nantucket and also deliver a grandfather clock to their well-heeled patron.

The August 13th premiere is quite the event. It will begin with "Paul Cuffe Is Me," a music video performed by Boston-based rapper Daniel Laurent, with music by Roy Studmire and dancers from Brickhouse NYC.

Following the screening, a Q&A will be moderated by Lee Blake of the New Bedford Historical Society with participation from Allison, Brown and Berrios alongside Akeia de Barros Gomes, PhD, director of the Edward W. Kane and Martha J. Wallace Center for Black History at the Newport Historical Society. There will then be a second private screening and fundraising gala, "Cocktails with Cuffe," in the museum's Harbor View Gallery.

“I was really surprised to hear about his story, this guy who was born free and thriving and politically influential and wealthy,” Allison, who now calls Marion, Massachusetts home, told Sippican Week. “It kind of pissed me off a little bit. It certainly lit a fire, and I was like, ‘Why hasn't this story of thriving been told before?’”

Helping Allison bring the film to life is Emmy-nominated cinematographer Ayana Baraka, herself one of the few Black women in IATSE Local 600. The USC grad is also the creator of Greenwood Avenue, a VR experience about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

Following the New Bedford premiere, another similar event with Q&A will be presented August 21st at the Egan Maritime Institute in Nantucket.

[The Paul Cuffe Story]

Pair of UCLA Grads Spotlight Raleigh's Quirkiest Neighborhood

2026-08-03T08:35:08.640-07:00

Prior to attending UCLA, Kate Gleason and Margaret Maloney started out their life trajectories in, respectively, upstate New York and western New Jersey.

Now, the pair have combined for a faraway feature documentary that celebrates the quirky Victorian-homes neighborhood of Oakwood. Located on the northeast side of Raleigh, North Carolina, Oakwood is known for its Christmas and Halloween celebrations, a "Samedi Gras" local parade complete with a chosen King Leonidas and Imperial Empress, a warm embrace of LGTBQ+ residents and more.

Running 91 minutes, There's Something About Oakwood - directed by Gleason and produced by Maloney - will premiere up the road in Durham on August 15th as part of the 2026 OUTSOUTH Queer Film Festival. Somewhat unusually, the soundtrack for the film, composed by local musician Liam Wallace, was released a full year ahead of the film's arrival.

'Our neighbor Maggie is pleased to announce tickets are available to the premiere of the Oakwood documentary,' neighborhood resident Steve Champeon wrote on Facebook. 'If you've ever been curious about what a weird little neighborhood Hesther Hesketh and I live in, here's your chance.'

To wit, Champeon went on to point out that a still photo from the film features a mutual friend, Susan Rose "Boo" Reynolds, for whom Champeon and his partner have for many years collected dead cicadas. The wings of those dead cicadas have in turn been transformed into jewelry by Reynolds for her homespun brand Bijousavvy.

Of course, it's not all wine, roses and cicada wings. Journalist Josh Reynolds, who got a sneak peek at the documentary, notes that the film includes some inherent and familiar contradictions. 'Oakwood is almost entirely white,' he wrote, 'a sad truth that is at least partially explainable by the legacy of forced segregation. On top of that, Oakwood houses are now so expensive that the longtime, pioneering residents [who helped save the area in the 1970s] and who helped make them attractive could not afford to buy any of them.'

While at UCLA, in the MFA program, Gleason was awarded a $30,000 production grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for her thesis film Spacey, about a female astronaut who appeals for some Mars mission funding on a reality TV show. Maloney, who studied business economics, accounting and English literature, also works as an artist.

[OUTSOUTH Queer Film Festival]

Filmmaker Gears Up for Route 66 Roadshow

2026-08-01T08:33:55.259-07:00

Documentary filmmaker John Paget has a deep personal connection to Route 66.

Back in the early 1990s, after graduating from college, he turned a cross-country trip to retrieve a Cadillac into a feature documentary titled Route 66: An American Odyssey. Now, as the historic highway turns 100, he's back with another film titled Route 66: The Main Street of America.

Paget and his beloved Cadillac

The feature documentary will have a road trip of its own, world premiering September 1st at the Art Institute of Chicago and then traveling, with Paget, across eight states for various screening events and premieres. It all culminates November 7th in Los Angeles with a final screening at the Los Angeles Theatre on South Broadway in downtown L.A.

For each roadshow stop, Paget will host a post-screening discussion with some of the people featured locally in the documentary. All and all, this really is a fantastic way to celebrate the 100th anniversary of America's most celebrated highway.

Paget spent six months on the road making the documentary, capturing emblematic stories along the way. "It's a lot of people living creative, adventuresome lives, but kind of choosing the road less traveled," he told Albuquerque's KOAT-TV. "That's what's keeping the road alive. Like moving to Tucumcari, New Mexico, buying an old motel (The Blue Swallow) off of Zillow and restoring it."

One of the most seminal stories in the film is that of a pair of cousins in Luther, Oklahoma who completed in the spring the restoration of the Threatt Filling Station. Opened in 1933 as the first Black-owned gas station along Route 66, it has been transformed into an interpretive center.

In between the Route 66 documentaries, Paget has made films about Elvis Presley, Alcatraz, a Santa Claus convention in Florida and more. He's also given a TED Talk about how to revitalize small towns.

[Route 66: The Main Street of America - screenings schedule]

Previously on FilmStew:

A 66-Year-Old Cyclist Tackles a 100-Year-Old Highway

Questions About Late 1960s Michigan Serial Killings Continue to Linger

2026-07-30T08:29:04.727-07:00

When Andrew Templeton moved from Detroit to Ann Arbor in 2018, he came across a copy of the 1974 book The Michigan Murders (reissued in 2010) sitting on the "Local Interest" shelf at the District Library.

The book is all about John Norman Collins (a.k.a. John Norman Chapman), a suspected serial killer known as the Ypsilanti Ripper and Co-Ed Killer, who has been serving a life sentence in prison since 1970. Between 1967 and 1969, seven girls and women between the ages of 13 and 21 were abducted, raped and murdered. Several of the victims were menstruating at the time.

John Norman Collins mugshot

Collins was convicted of the final murder, which claimed the life of 18-year-old Eastern Michigan University student Karen Sue Beineman. Templeton spent six years researching and making his maiden feature documentary about the crimes, titled 1969: Killers, Freaks, And Radicals. After debuting in 2025, the film is rolling back out this summer with pair of screenings in Detroit on August 7th and Ann Arbor on August 8th.

"In a culture that is so big on true crime, this has mostly been forgotten," Templeton told Detroit's WXYZ-TV ahead of the twin screenings. "Traditionally, Collins has been looked at as a lone killer and this film really challenges that perception. I think there's significant reason to believe it was the work of a small group."

Coincidentally, not long after Templeton first became aware of the crimes, the Detroit Free Press published an in-depth investigation into the Michigan Murders in the fall of 2019. The main piece of new evidence, which the filmmaker came to in his own way via interviews, was that Collins wrote a letter to his cousin blaming the murders on a roommate.

One of the reasons the Michigan Murders case was quickly forgotten is that a week after Collins was arrested on July 31st, 1969, the Charles Manson murders rained down on Los Angeles August 8th-9th. In fact, it was the absence of any existing documentary that helped cement Templeton's desire to make his film about the case. Other than the killing for which Collins is serving, all of the remaining murders (five in Michigan, one in California) remain officially unsolved.

[1969: Killers, Freaks, And Radicals ]

A Celebrated Vietnam Veterans Play Gets the Movie Treatment

2026-07-28T07:56:39.684-07:00

On July 4th, 1980, at midnight, the improvisational theatre exercise Tracers was first shared by eight Vietnam veterans as a work-in-progress at the Odyssey Theatre in west Los Angeles.

On August 1st, at 2 p.m., Tracers: The Documentary, a 102-minute look at the play's unusual and flourishing history, will world premiere at the Texas Theatre in Dallas as part of the 2026 Oak Cliff Film Festival. Along with director Matthew Perniciaro, the post-screening Q&A will feature one of the original actors from that 1980 start, Richard Chaves.

Tracers was the brainchild of Vietnam veteran John DiFusco. The full production got off to a bit of rocky start in the fall of that same year, 1980, before a "Pick of the Week" from alt-weekly LA Weekly helped cement a year-long run. The play was later restaged by Gary Sinise at Steppenwolf in Chicago and by Joseph Papp's Public Theatre in New York City. Touring productions followed.

The original cast of Tracers [Odyssey Theatre]

'I ran an ad in the Drama-Logue (Backstage-West) for actors who were Vietnam vets to participate in a workshop leading to the creation of a play,' DiFusco recalled. 'I got about thirty pictures and resumes. Auditions were held and I selected six actors: Vincent Caristi, Richard Chaves, Rick Gallavan, Harry Stephens, Merlin Marston and Eric Emerson. Sheldon Lettich, a Vietnam vet writer, was also a member of the group.'

'I conducted workshops in an abandoned dining hall at the old Sepulveda Veterans Administration,' he continued. 'Material came fast... During that year a U.S. Vietnam vet movement sprang up and we found ourselves in the middle of it. Demonstrations were taking place all over, bringing more interest in Tracers. Media coverage, stories in the press, and awards.'

Tracers had another high-profile run in 1985-86 at the Coronet Theatre in Los Angeles. Chaves' performance was noticed by casting director Jackie Burch, who brought him in to read for Three Amigos. Although that opportunity never panned out, Burch sent director John McTiernan to see the play's revival, leading to Chaves landing the part of Jorge “Poncho” Ramírez in the 1987 action film Predator.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Richard Chaves (@rchaves.official)

In a recent interview with fan site AVP Galaxy, Chaves remembered his early waitering days, as one of the first 25 at the original Cheesecake Factory in Beverly Hills and at Cafe Figaro in Los Feliz. "I was working at Cafe Figaro when a young actor, Xander Berkeley, came up to me and said, “Richard, you are a Vietnam veteran, right?”," he recounted. "I never told anybody. He says, “Look, they are looking for Vietnam veterans to do a play about Vietnam at the Odyssey Theatre."

"I said, “No, I am done with that,”" he continued, "But he wrapped a flyer in a couple of dollars in the middle of the frenzy of a restaurant and said, “Richard, this was on table five,” and put it in my bag. The next thing I know, I took my picture, resume, and a copy of my DD214 to the Odyssey, and the beginning of my career was Tracers."

[Diorama Media]

Scottish Mountaineer's Tale Basks in the Matterhorn's Glow

2026-07-26T08:07:46.046-07:00

In the documentary The Oldest Munro Bagger, Scottish mountain climber Nick Gardner talks about being inspired as a little boy by looking at photos of the Matterhorn from his parents' trip to Switzerland.

On July 27th, his film will screen at the foot of that very same mountain as part of the 2026 edition of Italy's Cervino Cinemountain festival. "What a full circle moment to have his story shown there!" exclaimed Jay Golian, who co-directed the film with his wife Christina.

It gets better. Because the film won Best International Feature Documentary last month at the Katmandu Film Festival, where it made its international premiere, it is also in contention for the Italian festival's Grand Prix Des Festivals. For this prize, the Cinemountain event, which unfolds at some 6,500 feet above sea level, groups together six nominees that have won Best Film at International Alliance of Mountain Film sanctioned events. It has been dubbed by the festival as the "Oscars of mountain films."

In 2020, after Gardner's wife was diagnosed with dementia, he set out at age 80 to climb all 282 Scottish Munro peaks (hills over 3,000 feet high) to raise funds for Alzheimer Scotland and the Royal Osteoporosis Society. He completed his goal in 2022, while the documentary as a whole was filmed over a span of four years.

The Oldest Munro Bagger is the Golians' first film. Before recently relocating to Edinburgh, where Christina is from, the pair were wedding photographers based in British Columbia. (In fact, they originally met in 2005 on the slopes of another mountain, Whistler.) After the pandemic canceled their photography bookings, they set out to find a new project and wound up on the doorstep of Gardner.

The appeal of the film is universal. At the recent Sheffield Adventure Film Festival in the U.K., it registered the highest audience rating of any entry shown with a 9.7.

Sadly, Gardner's wife Janet passed away in December 2022, just a few months after he completed the Munros challenge in August. At the end of the following year, Gardner was given an MBE (Member of the British Empire) as part of King Charles' New Year's Honors.

Coincidentally, Quinn Young, a 10-year-old Scottish girl, also completed the Munros challenge just a few months after Gardner and did it again (!) in 2025.

[Cervino Cinemountain]

New England Mob Boss TV Investigation Bounces to Big Screen

2026-07-24T08:12:14.904-07:00

This is not your everyday path to a film festival slot.

In December 2025, Providence, Rhode Island TV station WPRI debuted The Last Don of Providence, a four-part docuseries about Luigi "Baby Shacks" Manocchio, the last mob boss to lead the notorious Patriarca New England crime family. Manocchio served prison time in the 2010s before passing away at age 97 on December 8th, 2024. It was in fact his death that paved the way for series to be made.

All four parts have been combined into one and will screen as a one-hour and 44-minute feature August 7th as part of this year's Rhode Island International Film Festival. (It helps that the episodes, when strung together, produce a perfect feature-length product.) This follows previous non-merged screening nods at the New Bedford Film Festival in April and the New Block Film Festival in May.

"I was not expecting this when I started at 12 News 20 years ago," investigative reporter Tim White, who co-created the series with Eli Sherman, admitted on air. "We're thrilled about it. The docuseries was chosen from more than 7,000 film submissions representing over 110 countries."

"Manocchio's life of crime really paralleled the rise and fall of the Patriarca crime family," he continued. "We talked to so many people who helped shape who he was. The support we get for investigative reporting at 12 News is unmatched, and this is the kind of series that showcases the enterprise work that we do."

White, the managing editor and chief investigative reporter for WPRI-TV, is the son of Jack White, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1974 for National Reporting for his exposé in the Providence Journal about President Nixon's failure to pay income taxes. In May, the docuseries won a regional Edward R. Murrow award as part of its phenomenal post-release run.

Mannochio rose to the top of the crime family after the death of Raymond L. S. Patriarca in 1984. As explored in Episode 3, "The Downfall," he became an underboss to Francis "Cadillac Frank" Salemme, the same man he was once both a roommate of and on the run together with in the 1970s.

[The Last Don of Providence ]

British Mockumentary Takes Aim at Worm Charming

2026-07-22T08:35:18.617-07:00

Formed in 2022 by a quartet of London Film Academy students, Jacco Macacco Films is unfurling their latest grassroots production.

The Worm Charmers is a 30-minute mockumentary spun off a very real activity, which holds its annual World championship each June in the small Cheshire town of Willaston and has a Guinness World Record to go along with it. The idea is to coax worms out of the ground without digging, usually by means of a planted fork and tapped vibrations.

Following a cast, crew, friends and family screening earlier this month in London, The Worm Charmers is set to screen this weekend, Sunday July 26th, in Grantham, the hometown of co-director Oscar Hewitt. At the center of the film's four-hour competition are dairy farmer Abigail and her estranged brother William, a lawyer.

Ironically, when the film was shot over four days last September mainly at a park in London, not a single worm was charmed. Somewhat cheekily, the end credits include the sentence, 'No worms were charmed in the making of this movie.'

Following the London screening, attendee Tommo Thomas raved, "Best one yet, guys! Just keep getting better and better." Submissions to various film festivals are in progress.

Jacco Macacco's first effort, the 47-minute comedy A Van Called Muriel (2023), was about a deluded folk music band journeying across the British countryside to their first-ever gig. This was followed by Saving Penelope (2024), a 36-minute comedy heist film, and Friday Is Mushroom Soup (2025), about a burnt-out caretaker.

[Jacco Macacco Films: Instagram]

A Nebraska High School Reunion Film Turns 50

2026-07-20T08:25:22.987-07:00

The second annual "Made in Nebraska" summer film series at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has a notable homegrown entry this year.

Matter-of-factly titled Reunion '61-'76, the 90-minute TV documentary was shot in 1976 at nearby Beatrice High School's 15-year-reunion in black and white with a handheld camera. Although it has been shown at subsequent reunions, including one earlier this month, the July 29th screening at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center of a new print is a rare chance for the public to enjoy it on the big screen.

Beatrice '61-'76 [screen grab]

Both director John Spence and cinematographer Michael Farrell will be in attendance to present the celebratory 50th anniversary showing. The film was originally made in partnership with Nebraska Educational Television (now Nebraska Public Media) and broadcast locally.

What makes the July 29th screening even more resonant is the fact that the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is where Spence went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1969 and a Master of Fine Arts in 1972. From there, he worked for decades as both a photographer and documentary filmmaker.

Among the projects he subsequently had a hand in for Nebraska Public Media as a cinematographer were a portrait of artist Reinhold Marxhausen and a 90-minute look at state government. His many photographic achievements include capturing significant Black men and women of the state in 1981 with support from a Nebraska Council on the Humanities grant.

"Reunion '61-'76 is a very interesting slice of American life, and I think John got something really important to say with this film," Farrell told the Flatwater Free Press. "It's a really important piece of work and it shouldn't just get buried someplace."

To that effect, a few months ago, Spence posted the film in its entirety on YouTube. The time-capsule documentary can be viewed here.

[John Spence: website]

Cree Nation Snooker Player Gets Loving Portrait From His Daughter

2026-07-18T08:04:33.342-07:00

For the past five years, Canadian make-up artist Lesia T. Bear has been working on a feature documentary about her father, Jimmy Bear, a legendary snooker player.

Along the way, she commissioned a logo for the project from Running Buffalo and more importantly, saw her dad get inducted into the Canadian Snooker Hall of Fame in 2022 (along with his brother and several others). "The Billiards and Snooker Association finally acknowledged my father's outstanding achievements, which had previously been overlooked," Lesia told ACTRA Alberta. "I am extremely proud that sharing his story brought my father the recognition he deserved."

Logo created by Running Buffalo

This weekend, it's finally time to show Jimmy Bear the finished product, at a private screening. At age 86, Jimmy Bear today, July 18th, will get to watch Jimmy The Bear at Calgary's cSpace together with his daughter and others.

Astonishingly, after Lesia's parents separated when she was just a baby and she was sent to live with her grandparents, she was told her father was dead. Per a write-up in the Cochrane Eagle, it was only at age 13, when Lesia asked to visit her father's grave, that she finally learned the truth.

Jimmy won the 1980 Canadian Snooker Championship and was known during his playing days for racking up perfect games. For the documentary, his daughter interviewed dozens of former players and contemporaries, many of whom touch on the racism dad faced in snooker halls. Lesia used a main grant from the Alberta Foundation of the Arts as well as other grants and fundraised support to complete the film.

"Creating the documentary for my father has been an incredible odyssey," Lesia shared on Instagram, "filled with lessons and triumphs. With every setback, my resolve only strengthened, because making this for him is what truly matters."

She told the Eagle that her plan is to submit the documentary to festivals, especially in the United Kingdom, where snooker remains popular. In addition to make-up, Lesia has worked as a set dresser on films such as the 2020 Kevin Costner drama Let Him Go and 2021's Ghostbusters: Afterlife, as well as a stand-in on countless other projects.

[Jimmy The Bear: Official website]

Previously on FilmStew:

"Daughter Pays Tribute to Her Big Wave Surfer Dad"

Homegrown Production Waves the Flag for NASCAR's Moonshine Origins

2026-07-16T08:16:43.153-07:00

The evolution of the new short film The Fabulous Flocks pretty much mirrors the twists and turns of a stock car race.

The project started during COVID in 2020 as a feature-length screenplay, with Allegra Demeroff inspired by her husband Jeff Kaminsky's family history connections to the origins of NASCAR. Then in 2023, when the writers and actors strikes happened, the couple fundraised around $60,000 and turned it into their own TV series project. That plan eventually morphed a 21-minute short film.

The film centers around Leonard "Peachtree" Williams, a real-life moonshine kingpin in Alabama. With the FBI breathing down his neck, Williams turns in 1924 to his young nephew Carl Flock, a crackerjack driver, to ferry the merchandise in better and faster ways.

Flock's work in Atlanta paved the way for his younger siblings Bob, Fonty and Tim to become NASCAR drivers, with Tim making it into the circuit's Hall of Fame in 2014. Meanwhile, a mechanic of that time, Red Vogt, was hired initially by Williams and later worked on the moonshine cars of another trafficker, Raymond Parks, before eventually supplying the first NASCAR-race winning car and working as the circuit's original master mechanic.

The Fabulous Flocks is set to screen August 7th at the Cobb International Film Festival in Marietta, Georgia. It debuted earlier this spring at the Julien Dubuque International Film Festival in Iowa.

"This all started at Thanksgiving dinner in 2019, when my husband said that his family were early NASCAR drivers and I really didn't believe him because he's such a prankster," Deberoff recalled in a chat with the Cobb County Courier. "He said, 'Oh yeah, I have a great-uncle who's in the NASCAR Hall of Fame and there were women drivers and Tim rode with a monkey."

"And I'm like, 'Yeah, right,'," she continued. "I did a quick Google search and lo and behold, everything he said was correct, including the monkey."

The Flock brothers competed together in NASCAR's inaugural Strictly Stock race at the Charlotte Speedway on June 19th, 1949. A month later, all three brothers (Bob, Fonty, Tim) and their sister, Ethel Mobley, raced at the Daytona Beach Road Course. It's the only time four siblings have competed in the same NASCAR race.

Hurricane Katrina Coin Toss Echoes Through Look Back at 2006 Airline Tragedy

2026-07-14T07:30:14.560-07:00

Larry Brannock was a reporter for WKYT-TV in Lexington, Kentucky in 2006 the day Comair Flight 5191 bound for Atlanta crashed out of Blue Grass Airport.

On August 6th, Brannock will premiere a new feature documentary he has produced and directed about the disaster titled 49 Doves: The Flight 5191 Disaster. The film will unfurl at the Kentucky Theatre during the 20th anniversary month of the tragedy, which on August 27th, 2006 claimed 49 lives.

Brannock, who now works in energy communications, put the film together fairly quickly, starting on it in earnest last fall. He told his former journalism employer WKYT that among the stories he uncovered is that of Julie Shephard and Cecile Moscoe.

The two friends, before the flight, flipped a coin to decide which one of them would board the plane to assist with the recovery effort for Hurricane Katrina. Moscoe won the coin toss.

"As Cecile is sitting in Blue Grass Airport, they talked for a few minutes telephone," Brannock shared. "The last thing Cecile says is, 'I love you and I'll call you when I get there.'"

The tragedy was the result of human error, as the pilot took the wrong runway during takeoff. For the 95-minute documentary, Brannock interviewed several dozen people connected to the events of that horrible day.

Comair Airlines, a subsidiary of Delta, operated from 1977 to 2012. The sole survivor of the crash, First Officer and co-pilot James Polehinke, was the subject of a 2013 documentary subsequently acquired by CNN.

[49 Doves: Official website]

Massachusetts Public School Teacher Moves to the Front of Screenwriting Class

2026-07-12T08:33:26.468-07:00

When the independently financed feature film Little Audrey world premieres July 25th at the Woods Hole Film Festival in Cape Cod, it will mark a full circle moment for screenwriter Caitlin McCarthy.

McCarthy, a longtime English Language Arts teacher at Worcester Technical High School, has been pursuing screenwriting on the side for decades. Back when she previously worked in PR, on the Cape, she took part in a TV Writers Symposium held in association with the festival.

"Both P.K. Simmons and his wife, former Hollywood talent manager Beth Colt, became champions of my writing," McCarthy explained to The Enterprise News. "They offered mentoring, practical advice and ongoing support over the years."

Caitlin McCarthy [Facebook]

At the 2008 Woods Hole Film Festival, McCarthy bagged a Best Science Screenplay award for her script Wonder Drug. And now, two decades later, after being hired onto the project in 2025, she is opening the festival with the world premiere of a film for which she is also an associate producer.

Little Audrey is inspired by the real-life story of Audrey Santo, a three-year-old Worcester girl who fell into a vegetative state after a drowning accident in 1987. As reports of extraordinary, miraculous occurrences in her presence began circulating, she became idolized by Catholic worshippers as a "victim soul." The international media attention eventually sparked a Vatican investigation for possible fraud. (Santo died in 2007.)

Jeff Thomas, a real estate developer who put up $3 million to make the film, first became aware of the Santo story in the late 1990s. "I firmly believe with all my heart that the extraordinary events and reported miracles associated with Audrey's life will one day be known throughout the world," he shared in his Producer's Statement. "It is also my personal belief that Audrey Santo will one day be canonized as a saint, and I am honored to help share her story with future generations."

Little Audrey was directed by Michael Mailer and features in its cast Jennifer Esposito as Audrey's mother and Aidan Quinn as Bishop Ryan. Fascinatingly, McCarthy's earliest made credit was as co-writer of the short-short 2012 comedy film Deadline Knows, all about... Nikki Finke! (Watch it here.)

[Woods Hole Film Festival: Little Audrey ]

Documentary Series Revisits South Dakota Punk Music Scene

2026-07-10T08:27:08.320-07:00

On Saturday, July 11th at the Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City, South Dakota, the first episode of a new documentary series will premiere. With the killer title Who the F*** Wants to Play in Rapid City SD?

The series is the brainchild of Jack Batchelder, who watched the tail end of the 1980s-1990s local punk scene as a kid and later played drums for local heavy metal-drudge punk band Corundum. He started working on the documentary series in 2016 before tabling it for a while, but now, the first episode is set to screen alongside the latest and final Rapid City Punk Rock Family Reunion July 9th-11th.

The reunion side of the festivities features three separate nightly concerts at The Park 707 and informal get togethers at local bar Aby's. The documentary side of the weekend looks back at a time when it was all about hand-drawn flyers, music zines and college radio.

In the case of Rapid City, the radio station doing the punk scene fanning was KTEQ, the campus broadcaster for the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. The western South Dakota city also turned out to be a perfect geographic stopping point for bands touring the U.S. and as its reputation for putting on solid gigs grew, so did the name-brand thrash bands coming through.

"I'm not a professional filmmaker or documentarian," Batchelder told Black Hills Art Beat. "I'm just someone who has been inspired by the community and DIY ethic of the Rapid City punk scene and believes these things deserve to be documented."

The first episode of Who the F*** offers a general overview of the topic and will be made available at some point online. Batchelder says future episodes will focus on KTEQ as well as specific bands, promoters, venues and more.

The Rapid City Punk Rock Family Reunion previously held events in 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2022. Fittingly, this final one takes place on the 40th anniversary year of a January, 1986 benefit concert for a Stevens High School student with cancer, an event that is generally acknowledged to have kickstarted the local punk music scene.

[Screening event page]

Previously on FilmStew:

Punk Rock Rages On in Danny Garcia's 50th Anniversary Celebration

A Pair Descended From 'Hidden Child' Mothers Come Together for Holocaust Documentary

2026-07-08T08:23:19.403-07:00

The director, Marc Smolowitz, and star, Alix Wall, of the feature documentary The Lonely Child are bonded together in a number of powerful ways.

They both attended UC Santa Cruz, where they originally met. And they are both children of Holocaust survivors whose mothers were a so-called "hidden child," smuggled away during World War II to a different, safe circumstance in order to survive.

When their 109-minute feature documentary premieres July 18th at the Castro Theatre as part of the 2026 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, there will be couple more strong bonds at play. Smolowitz, a prolific producer and director of independent film, got his first job out of college with the festival. And in 2018, as a filmmaker-in-resident at San Francisco's Jewish Institute, the organization that puts on the festival, he worked on the early stages of The Lonely Child.

Wall's mother (Sarah Wall) was born in 1939 in Vilna or what is now Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. Her grandfather was murdered by the Nazis in 1941 and two years later, as her hidden-child mother was being raised by a Catholic nanny, her grandmother (Rachela Melezin) had a romantic relationship with poet Shmerke Kaczerginski. It was Kaczerginski who penned Yiddish holocaust lullaby "Dos Elnte Kind" about the separation of Wall's grandmother and mother-child, creating a song that would become an anthem for many others over the years.

Wall holding a picture of Kaczerginski (13th Gen)

Meanwhile, when Smolowitz was attending UC Santa Cruz, his thesis film was also about his Holocaust hidden mother. "Little did we know that the screening of that film would be the inciting event for Alix and I to come together to make The Lonely Child," Smolowitz shared on Instagram. "We went back to UCSC to do a final round of B-roll filming to mark this moment."

Wall, a lifelong journalist, told J-The Jewish News of Northern California, a publication for whom she writes, that all credit goes to Smolowitz for keeping their film project going through tough times. They secured grants from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and Jewish Story Partners, and are also currently in the process of trying to retroactively raise a remaining $20,000 with help from the National Center for Jewish Film.

It is bound to be an emotional time for both the filmmakers and audiences when The Lonely Child premieres July 18th and encore-screens July 29th at the Piedmont Theatre. "It's not an exaggeration to say that The Lonely Child might never have existed without the inspiration I found in the many deeply personal Jewish documentaries I encountered at San Francisco's Jewish Film Festival over the years," Wall revealed to J. "Watching filmmakers investigate their own family histories helped me imagine that I might someday do the same."

[San Francisco Jewish Film Festival: The Lonely Child ]

Rwanda Finds an Unlikely Film Partner in Maine

2026-07-06T09:03:03.433-07:00

Last November, at the Mashiriki African Film Festival in Kigali, Rwanda, two respective filmmaking teams working in that country and Maine on a documentary project met for the first time as a work-in-progress version of their combined effort was screened.

Now, the 18-minute finished film, Ikawa: Coffee That Connects, is set to premiere Sunday July 12th at the Waterville Opera House as part of the 2026 Maine International Film Festival. The event is sponsored by the Mid-Maine Global Forum and a reception will follow.

Ikawa was the brainchild of Mike Perrault, executive director of the Maine Film Centre, which puts on the Maine International Film Festival. He first traveled to Rwanda a few years ago and gradually realized that there was a throughline from Kigali to Waterville that most people might not be aware of and that the world is much more connected than perhaps people generally think.

To wit, the two main characters in the documentary are Churchill Elangwe-Preston, who runs Mbingo Mountain Coffee out of his garage in Waterville (and shares profits with his countrymen back home), and Jean-Jacques "JJ" Ndayisenga, managing director of the Rwanda Trading Company. Students from the Mid-Maine Technical Center were recruited to film the Maine portions of the film, while another student crew in Kigali put together the Rwanda end of the narrative.

"The challenges that we encountered in this experimental process," Perrault told Maine Public Radio, "were that it's actually really difficult to collaborate on a project filed specifically, consistently with regular feedback. And for one of our Maine student filmmakers, traveling to Kigali last fall [on a 30-hour trajectory] was their first time on a plane."

Tresor Senga, director of the Mashiriki African Film Festival, will be in attendance at the July 12th premiere screening. "Coffee is more than just a drink," he shared on Instagram. "It is a bridge that connects cultures, storytelling and communities across oceans. From the fields to the screen, this project embodies the true spirit of global creative unity."

[Maine International Film Festival: Ikawa ]

Cuban Film Festival Works Around Island's Chronic Power Shortages

2026-07-04T09:00:44.654-07:00

Initially scheduled to run April 14th-18th, the 20th edition of the Gibara International Low-Budget Film Festival will now take place in Cuba July 14th-18th, with a major plot twist.

Thanks to the Iran war and fitful U.S. blockade of the island, the northern coastal town of Gibara and larger municipality of Holguin have been wracked by ongoing and often extended power outages. So instead of the usual halls and auditoriums, this year there will be three outdoor screens hooked up to battery power.

"Gibara will operate as a city of spotlights, three of which will be dedicated to cinema," Organizing Committee Chair Sergio Bienvenuto Solás told the Cuban News Agency. "During the evenings, the festival will transform into a space of joy, quality and light."

Sergio Bienvenuto Solás [Facebook]

Given the unavoidable diminishment of international attendees this year, the rescheduling to the summer was chosen partly to allow local university students and high school teens to attend. The festival announced its official entries for feature films, feature-length documentaries, short films, animation and experimental films, with Lucia Awards to follow. (The festival's awards are named in honor of the 1968 black and white Cuban film Lucia, made by event founder Humberto Solás.)

In the documentary category for example, there are 10 entries. Alongside films from France, Spain, Brazil, the U.K. and Argentina, Cuba has four productions from 2025 competing: Padilla, Mijaín, A Lucky Artist and Let's Paint the Economy Purple... So No One Is Left Behind.

Leon Ponce, who has done artwork for the festival since nearly its 2002 beginning, is responsible once again for this year's poster. In the festival notes, he explains that the spark for the 20th edition design was the Artemis II lunar exploration project.

'This journey will take us to a "Gibara moon," inspired by the one in the work of Georges Méliès, a classic of world cinema,' Ponce explained. 'Reaching these cinematic shores is, in itself, a feat.'

Viva Cuba Festival Libre!

[FICGibara: Facebook]

Absurdist Romantic Drama Casts Bigfoot as Its Leading Man

2026-07-02T08:40:42.900-07:00

For Irish writer-director Megan Murphy, the key to her new short film was believability... with a capital B.

"In Bigfoot Lover, the creature represents something much deeper," she wrote for a GoFundMe campaign. "A primal reflection of the things we chase in love, the roles we play and the instincts we try to contain. To tell this story right, Bigfoot has to be believable and, dare I say, lovable. Bringing a supposed mythical beast to life is going to take a lot of time, talent and materials."

Murphy initially landed a €12,000 grant from the Offaly Film Commission last year to fund the project. But she turned to GoFundMe for an additional €5,000 to put specifically towards the Bigfoot costume and facial prosthetics.

Her film is set to premiere July 8th at the Galway Film Fleadh in Galway, Ireland. It stars Enya Donahue as Cute, a woman seeking refuge in her father's home in the woods after a messy affair, and Darragh Shannon as the strong and not-so-silent type male specimen of her dreams.

The attention to detail for the Bigfoot costume by Rebecca McConnon and prosthetics by Paul McDonnell seems to have paid off. "The costume is so realistic that dog walkers in Charleville Forest were forced to double-take when they happened upon the crew at work [in and around Tullamore last fall]," a statement from FilmOffaly revealed.

And in a nod to the modern-era standards of filmmaking, Bigfoot Lover had an intimacy coordinator. The score meanwhile was put together by Dublin-based composer Edward O'Mahony, who has previously worked on a pair of short films done by the same production label, Carousel Pictures.

[Galway Film Fleadh: "Irish Fiction 1" program]

Daughter Pays Tribute to Her Big Wave Surfer Dad

2026-06-30T08:00:14.674-07:00

When the godfather of surf cinema, Bud Browne, passed away in 2008, he bequeathed his vast collection of film footage and photographs to Anna Trent Moore, the daughter he never had.

Footage from those archives provides the foundation for a new 80-minute documentary about Anna's actual dad, the late Buzzy Trent, made by Anna in partnership with her husband Ronald Moore. Increments of Fear: The Buzzy Trent Story is set to open the 17th edition of the Honolulu Surf Film Festival on July 9th. Following the screening, there will be a panel discussion with surfing luminaries Clark Abbey, Ray Beatty, Joey Cabell, Darrick Dorner, Reid Inouye, James Jones, Randy Rarick and Jock Sutherland.

Browne first visited the Aloha State in 1938 and began filming footage of his surfing life and trips to Hawaii in the 1940s. In 1952, the same year Browne released his first commercial surf film, Trent followed his friend's lead by sailing on a Catamaran to Hawaii and pursuing that same surfing life, riding big waves on balsa wood boards long before the advent of foam boards, inflatable vests, jet skis or even surfboard leashes. Trent pioneered big wave surfing alongside George Downing and Greg Noll.

"I knew very early on that my father came from a faraway place in California," daughter Anna told Hawaii Public Radio (Buzzy Trent died at age 77 in 2006). "From a very different life. And he chose to sail to Hawaii and I knew that he was different than a lot of my friends' fathers. He looked different."

"My father gave up everything to be at [Oahu's] Makaha Point, to wait for Makaha Point to break," she continued. "And nothing made him happier, more excited and more loquacious and animated than that. I saw that in my father and that is something I grew up with and knew was a deep passion, that not everybody has."

Increments of Fear also examines the rather unique way Trent decided to leave the sport of surfing, and how dramatically he cut his ties with Makala Point. Anna joked that there is still so much 16-millimeter film footage in the Browne archives that has yet to be digitized that it will be a "life's work" for someone else after she and her husband pass. (Increments of Fear the movie follows Increments of Fear the book, which came out in 2012.)

Anna also told Hawaii Public Radio's Kevin Allen that one of her father's favorite books was Ernest Hemingway's 1932 non-fiction tome Death in the Afternoon, about Spanish bullfighters. "Had they not been surfers and they lived in Spain, my father and his friends would probably have gone on to be bullfighters. They just had that personality, that persona, that was driven to have a focus that was larger than life."

[Bud Browne Film Archives]

The Chernobyl Expat Who Grew the World's Tallest Sunflower

2026-06-28T08:37:05.134-07:00

In the fall of 2024, Victoria Britton won a PitchDox competition sponsored by non-profit Hoodox at the Heartland International Film Festival in Indianapolis. She was given $10,000 to put toward her documentary project Bloom.

On July 22nd, that short documentary will premiere in the same city as part of one of several Indiana showcase programs at the 9th annual IndyShorts Film Festival. Bloom will encore screen July 26th and in attendance at both events alongside Britton and several others will be the man of the hour, Alex Babich.

Babich made waves in 2025 when he set a new Guinness World Record for tallest sunflower, beating a mark standing since 2014 by a German competition gardener. He had grown one in 2024 that soared to 28 feet and two inches, but it was the "Clover" specimen the next year at 35 feet and two inches that shattered the previous mark.

Babich immigrated to Fort Wayne, Indiana from Ukraine with his parents at age 14 in 1991 following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The sunflower is his native country's national flower, adding some serious symbolism to his efforts in the shadow of the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war.

Britton co-directed and co-produced Bloom with Derek Hockemeyer and Malaki Tyne Bisel. The spark for the project actually dates back to the dreaded pandemic year of 2020.

"I first heard about Alex in 2020 while working as a news producer for the CBS affiliate in Fort Wayne," Britton explained in her Director's Statement. "The station had aired several profiles on him and his garden. Even then, it was clear to me that his passion for growing was driven by a deep desire to connect with nature and his family's roots."

In a funny twist, the seed for Babich's world-record plant came from Germany. Competition gardeners often exchange seeds with other growers and that's what he did with Burkhard Grendel, using it to grow his 2024 near-miss sunflower and then taking a seed from that plant to give life to the 2025 record setter.

[Bloom official website]

Revolutionary War Soldiers Resurrected in Time for America's 250th Anniversary

2026-06-26T08:59:31.627-07:00

Screening this weekend at the Pittsburgh Independent Film Festival, Graves on Indian Lane is a documentary short written and hosted by the owner-operators of a nearby local historical tour company.

Maris and Dustin Elder run the Central Pennsylvania outfit Local Historia, located in the Centre County borough of Bellafonte. They teamed with a number of others, including local high school teacher Matt Maris (a producer on the project) and Happy Valley Adventure Bureau film commissioner Pablo Lopez (director, producer), to tell the story of a pair of Revolutionary War soldiers who died in a July 24th, 1778 battle with Native American attackers.

Private Thomas Van Doran and Corporal Jacob Shadecre were dispatched to the fields of what is now Centre Hall to defend harvesters after a nearby family was massacred. Engaging with a party of five, Van Doran was immediately shot dead while Shadecre was chased. After both Shadecre and his attacker emptied their guns, a knife fight ensued, with the American killing his attacker before being shot by another member of the Native American group.

The soldiers' graves were initially marked by a simple rock, but in 1900, members of the organization Daughters of the American Revolution replaced that with an official marker. Beginning this July 4th, the full 17-minute film will be available to stream via the Centre County portion of a special Pennsylvania website marking the country's 250th anniversary.

"As someone who lived in Centre Hall and has gone down that [Indian Lane] road so many times - literally - I had to stop and be like, 'I never noticed that,'" Lopez told the Centre Daily Times. "The more I learned about it, the more we researched, the more the story just pulled me in."

Graves on Indian Lane first screened May 16th privately for members of Daughters of the American Revolution and then as a soft premiere May 27th at State College. The site of the graves marker can be viewed on Google Maps here.

[Pittsburgh Independent Film Festival]

Three Outsiders Paint the Picture of a Tiny Alaskan Town

2026-06-24T08:25:40.646-07:00

Given that Wrangell, Alaska, an island town at the southern end of the state, was named after Russian explorer Ferdinand Petrovich Wrangel, it's perhaps only fitting that a trio of people not from there have made a new documentary celebrating the place.

It all started in the summer of 2024 when Sam Pausman, originally from Maine, took a job at the Wrangell Sentinel, the oldest continuously publishing newspaper in Alaska, in print since 1902 and now weekly. He was immediately struck by the local color and regaled his childhood friend Skyler Piltch over the Christmas holidays that year.

Eventually, Pausman and Piltch brought in Katie Liebert to help produce and direct what turned out to be a 20-minute documentary short. Titled Walk Gently on This Land, the film aims to capture the spirit of Wrangell and Wrangell Island through the lives of teacher Barb Neyman, cultural historians Mike Hoyt and Esther Aaltséen Reese, sawmill operator Mike Allen Jr. and the family that owns Canoe Lagoon Oysters.

All three filmmakers are based in Southern California. Ironically, Pausman ended his time at the Wrangell Sentinel in 2025 just before the film was shot last spring on the island, taking a job as a food and culture writer with USA Today. He has just recently decided to leave daily newspaper journalism in favor of pursuing documentary filmmaking full-time.

Wrangell, which currently has a population of around 2,000, will host the premiere of Walk Gently on This Land as the country celebrates its 250th anniversary. The movie will screen Sunday July 5th at The Nolan Center.

"At the end of the day, after the premiere at The Nolan Center, you could put the film on a thumb drive and bury it six feet in the ground and have no one see it after that and I'd be just as happy," Pausman told his one-time employer. "To me, this has always been for the people of Wrangell."

Pausman's time in the town was definitely shorter than the years spent in the fictitious location of Cicely, Alaska by Rob Morrow's Dr. Joel Fleischer in the beloved 1990-1995 CBS series Northern Exposure. But the resulting project about a unique place and its cast of characters has a similar feel to it and could well strike a broad chord when it eventually hits the film festival circuit.

[The Nolan Center]

Keanu Reeves Keeps Long-Held Chess Match Promise

2026-06-22T08:20:38.009-07:00

Although the feature documentary Madwoman's Game officially premiered in April at the Miami Film Festival, it's likely to get a whole new lease on red-carpet life in July.

That's because when the film has its U.S. West Coast premiere July 30th at the 2nd annual Chicano Hollywood Film Festival in Pomona, California, executive producer Keanu Reeves will be there to play an exhibition chess match with star Bianca Mitchell-Avila. He will also take part in a post-screening Q&A alongside Avila, director Zach Zamboni and fellow executive producer Carla Berkowitz.

"My daughter, Bianca Mitchell-Avila, is a Chicana filmmaker who has poured the last 6 years of her life into making a documentary called Madwoman’s Game," proud papa Jack Mitchell wrote on Reddit. "We just found out that Keanu Reeves is flying back from his tour in Europe this July, and he is taking his literal only day off to come out to Southern California and completely back her project."

"Years ago, when the documentary first started filming, they were supposed to play a chess match for the original ending," he continued. "The film evolved over six years into something completely different, but Keanu and Bianca made a promise to each other that they would play over-the-board someday."

As luck would have it, Reeves and his Dogstar band will wrap up the European leg of their tour July 18th in Budapest, continuing on with the American portion August 1st in Austin. It's almost as if the schedule was tailor-made for this screening interruption.

The plan is to stream the match between Reeves and Mitchell-Avila on a yet-to-be-determined platform, so that fans worldwide can tune in to this highly unusual event. Dad Mitchell is the first person to have graduated with a B.A. in Chicana/o Studies from the University of New Mexico. He wrote that "seeing Bianca carry that torch forward into Hollywood is incredible."

The catalyst for the documentary was some odd reaction to Bianca's comments about the Netflix smash series The Queen's Gambit in a 2020 New York Times article. As she worked on the documentary about her chess playing, first conceived as a short film, she contacted Reeves's manager in 2021. Bianca's chess journey movie includes appearances by top female chess players Jennifer Shahade and Alexandra Botez.

[Chicano Hollywood Film Festival]

A Long Road from Touring Play to Short Film

2026-06-20T08:47:05.766-07:00

In the fall of 2021, Patricia Downey's play Runny Honey, about three incarcerated women, toured around Northern Ireland.

The play went on to win a Theatre Production award in 2022 at the Buxton Fringe Festival and was also performed at the Parliament buildings in Belfast that same year to help launch a new initiative by the Department of Justice. The title Runny Honey is a reference to prison slang for liquid heroin, a form of the drug that is relatively easy to smuggle into jails.

Five years later, the play has morphed into a short film with a different title, Bubble. It is the first film of any kind to be shot within the walls of Northern Ireland's maximum security Maghaberry prison.

(l to r) Louise Parker, Debra Hill, Claire Cogan

Bubble was unveiled at a private screening this week, June 17th, at the site of Belfast's former Crumlin Jail, which operated from 1846 to 1996 and is now a museum-visitor's center known simply as the "Crum." One aspect that makes the short film unique is the way it was funded.

'The production was made possible through support from the Assets Recovery Community Scheme (ARCS), funded by the Department of Justice, alongside collaboration with the Northern Ireland Prison Service,' the agency explained. 'It represents a powerful full-circle investment, with funds recovered from criminal activity being reinvested into work that examines its consequences and promotes rehabilitation.'

Downey is the artistic director of the Spanner in the Works theater company, an all-female led operation that was started in 1998. The plan is to submit Bubble to film festivals both in Northern Ireland and internationally.

'This was a moving and insightful film which explored women's experience of the justice system,' wrote Connie Eagan. 'As a member of the Justice Committee, I regularly see the positive difference that early and supportive interventions can make on the lives of vulnerable women.'

Added Mark Davenport: 'Although the issues raised are hard-edged, Bubble also contains a lot of Belfast black humor.'

The scene at June 17th "Crum" screening [Facebook]