When Israeli filmmaker Ayala Sharot’s young son begins having recurring nightmares, she sets out to understand where his fear comes from. What begins as a mother’s attempt to comfort her child becomes a journey across four generations of one family, tracing how fear, memory, and history pass from mother to child.
The search first brings Ayala to her father, Danny, a child psychologist who was raised in a 1950s kibbutz children’s house, when children slept apart from their parents in the name of collective ideals. It then leads her to Miriam, her grandmother, a Jewish girl from Detroit who fell in love with the Zionist dream and left America to build a life in Israel.
Decades later, Ayala is raising her own child in the country Miriam chose. Through intimate family encounters, archival traces, and dreamlike hand-drawn animation, the film moves between past and present, between Israel and America, and between the private world of motherhood and the larger dreams that shaped Jewish families on both sides of the ocean. As the story unfolds, the film brings forward the women’s side of that history, and the choices and silences that shaped the family across generations.
At its heart, A Mother’s Land is a personal film about motherhood, inheritance, and the fragile bond between the American Jewish dream of Israel and the reality of raising a child there today. Through one family’s story, it opens a larger conversation about fear, belonging, and the price of calling a place home.
Presented by Vision Beyond Vision Production Company LLC, The Boston Street Universe is an ambitious, interconnected five-series saga chronicling fifty years of Boston’s untold history. Adapted from the bestselling urban novels by author Myster Solomon, this cinematic universe stretches from the city’s iconic brick project walls to the cutthroat boardrooms of billion-dollar enterprises, delivering a powerhouse of authentic East Coast storytelling that Hollywood has yet to truly capture.
The saga features a deeply woven tapestry of crime, passion, and loyalty across five distinct series:
- Under the Brim: A gritty 1980s period drama tracking a charismatic leader transforming a street hustle into a media empire amidst a historic neighborhood conflict.
- Impulsive Love: Set in the fortress of Boston’s Columbia Point Projects, tracking an aspiring mogul and his partner as they spiral into a volatile cycle of obsession, betrayal, and street justice.
- First Ladies of Boston: A twenty-year look into the rise of an elite female crime family navigating the deadly crossroads of motherhood, street survival, and police corruption.
- The Roxbury Oath: A high-stakes culmination pitting a powerful syndicate against a ruthless, rogue police unit where the lines of loyalty and law enforcement are completely erased.
- Shadow of Alliance: A gripping look at the secret pacts, backroom deals, and hidden loyalties shifting the balance of power across the city’s changing landscape.
Meticulously crafted for the modern binge-watching era, The Boston Street Universe grounds itself in raw authenticity. Beyond creating premium, gripping media, this project acts as a vital community platform—utilizing its live-set production environments to train and employ local youth and aspiring creative technicians from the Boston and Brockton communities. Your tax-deductible donation directly funds our physical pre-production, script bibles, casting, and the development of local workforce talent.
Long before a technology reshapes everyday life, societies begin to imagine it. Before artificial intelligence entered our workplaces, before algorithms began curating what we see and believe, before the question of who controls the machines became one of the defining political questions of our time, science fiction was already rehearsing the answers.
Imagining Tomorrow is a feature-length documentary that examines over seventy years of science fiction film and television as something more than entertainment. It asks a question that feels newly urgent: if societies rehearse the future through stories, what do those stories reveal about what we feared, what we hoped for, and who we believed would be left holding the controls?
The film traces how speculative storytelling has tracked the great anxieties of each era. In the 1950s, the fear was nuclear annihilation and the loss of individual identity to faceless conformity. By the 1970s and 1980s, technology had begun to feel less like a tool and more like a system with a will of its own. In the 1990s, stories about conspiracy, surveillance, and the unreliability of reality itself reflected a growing suspicion that the institutions organizing modern life had grown too complex to understand and too powerful to challenge.
As the century turned, Y2K briefly made the machinery of modern civilization itself the villain, and when the clocks rolled over without catastrophe, the relief was short-lived. After September 11, the nostalgia that had softened earlier science fiction gave way to something harder: stories about survival, moral compromise, and imagining life inside the apocalypse rather than before it. Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Dead, and Children of Men were not warnings about the future. They were reckonings with a present that already felt broken. By the late 2000s and into the 2010s, a quieter shift was underway. The genre increasingly turned toward questions of meaning, belief, memory, and what survives catastrophe when science alone cannot explain the human need for hope.
Today something new is underway. As artificial intelligence reshapes communication, labor, creativity, and knowledge itself, speculative stories are asking not whether new technologies will work, but who will govern them, who will benefit, and what happens to everyone else. Contemporary science fiction is less concerned with the robot uprising than with something quieter and more unsettling: the gradual transfer of authorship, judgment, and power to systems no single person controls and few fully understand. The fear is not that the machines will turn on us. It is that we will hand them the keys willingly, and only later think to ask whose interests they were built to serve.
Imagining Tomorrow draws on a research database of more than 1,300 science fiction films and television series produced since 1950 to investigate whether these shifts represent a pattern, and what that pattern might tell us about the present moment. The film brings together historians, media scholars, philosophers, and cultural critics to explore how speculative storytelling has served as one of humanity’s most enduring ways of confronting what it cannot yet name.
Imagining Tomorrow is being developed by Charles River Media, Inc. with guidance from a humanities advisory board of scholars, historians, and cultural critics.
THE GRIND is one of the world’s first ever scripted vertical sitcoms. When it comes to vertical short-form, specifically the world of ReelShort and other such platforms, the unfortunate reality is that this content is exploitative and often misogynistic, promoting manipulation and excess. We want to bring goodness into this space – with an uplifting story, smart writing, and the nostalgia of cozy sitcoms. THE GRIND is female-led, female-written, female-directed, and female-produced, featuring a diverse cast and multi-abled actors. Our season will have 45-50 episodes, each about 1-5min in length, designed to be watched entirely on your phone.
A barista with nothing to lose and a coffee shop that won’t let her.
An ensemble comedy set behind the counter of a busy Atlanta coffee shop, the kind of place where the regulars have a usual, the staff has a group chat, and every shift hides a small disaster waiting to happen.
Through mishaps, late shifts, bad customers, and the steady highs and lows of being twenty-something and broke, the employees discover that the people you clock in with can start to feel an awful lot like family.
Co-Directed by Ollie Yao and Olivia Porretta
We’ve all been on that harrowing sprint— perhaps one too many coffees taking their toll as your mind starts racing, eyes darting around for any sign of relief. This is a feeling all too familiar for New Yorkers, a city where there is only 1 public restroom for every 8,500 residents. As Mayor Mamdani said: “Everyone knows the feeling of needing a bathroom and not being able to find one.” This film, I Need to Pee! aims to bring that issue to life as an animated comedy. It’s about a real New York problem — told through the eyes of a Brooklynite who just really, really needs to find a bathroom.
This is a film that punches back at the maddening state of the world today. It’s an aggressively handmade, clear-cut comedy that highlights one of the most important fixtures of the modern world. When you’re cast out onto the streets of an unforgiving city, a toilet is more than just a plumbing fixture— it’s a beautiful porcelain companion. When loved ones fail you, you know a toilet will always be there to help you through your most vulnerable moments.
This film has been my own story more times than I’d like to admit — I’m a former New Yorker with a notoriously small bladder, and the frantic search for a bathroom is one I know intimately. As an animator, making a film about it felt like the only reasonable response. Our team is led by industry professionals, with experience at Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar, and Paramount, committed to doing this story justice with a high level of visual quality. Our production ahead is clear, armed with a stellar script, strong visual development, and a full animatic, we aim to enter production with a straightforward roadmap for the journey in front of us.
All that said, this project doesn’t come to life without you. At its heart, this is a small, weird, deeply human story — the kind that rarely gets made anymore. Your support is what proves that it should. Thank you very much for your contribution.
History on the Road is an immersive television series concept created by Daniel Tobias Flint that brings American history to life by connecting national events to the local communities where they unfolded. Through engaging storytelling, on-location experiences, and collaboration with students, historians, and local residents, the series transforms traditional history education into an interactive journey across the United States. Each episode highlights how ordinary communities helped shape the broader American story, creating a meaningful connection between the past and present.
Produced by Amelio Media and led by award-winning documentarian Nicole Amelio-Casper, M.A., the project combines cinematic storytelling with educational outreach and community engagement. Rather than focusing solely on mainstream historical narratives, History on the Road explores the overlooked stories, hidden landmarks, and powerful local histories that helped define America. The series will examine subjects ranging from immigrant communities and industrial movements to Native American heritage and military history, bringing audiences face-to-face with the people and places that shaped the nation. Through reenactments, interviews, and immersive on-location filming, the series inspires viewers to see history not as distant events in textbooks, but as living stories rooted in communities across the country.
The first pilot episode, projected at a production cost of $220,000, will be filmed in historic downtown Philadelphia and surrounding areas rich with untold American history. The episode will explore Philadelphia’s deep Revolutionary War roots, hidden military history, immigrant influences, and the city’s role in shaping the foundation of the United States. By partnering with local schools, historians, museums, and community organizations, the pilot will create an authentic and educational viewing experience while serving as the foundation for the larger multi-year series. History on the Road aims to become both an engaging television series and a lasting educational resource that reconnects audiences nationwide with America’s shared history.
Six film students, one dream, and nothing to lose.
Keep Rolling is a found footage horror movie, told from the camera of Jessie, a wide eyed college freshman, eager to immerse herself in the world of filmmaking. Jessie has landed the lead role in a thesis film directed by West Bay University prodigy, Torrence. Eager to prove herself, Jessie dives in head first. However, the shoot quickly deteriorates due to battling egos, relationship drama, and limited resources. That’s when Torrence begins acting…strange, as if something supernatural has taken a hold of him. Torrence begins pushing the crew to extremes, life threatening extremes. Jessie quickly realizes that this isn’t what she signed up for, but how far will she go to make her dream come true?
At its core Keep Rolling is really a story about that moment where dreams meet reality, and the loss of innocence that comes with it. Jessie’s journey is one that everyone has experienced. Whether it was a job you thought you’d love but ended up hating, or a romance you thought would go the distance, but went up in flames, daring to dream always carries the risk of being crushed; but we do it anyway. With Keep Rolling we will explore how far that can really go.
In the past two years, a record number of Americans have lost their homes due to hurricanes, floods, wildfires, severe rainstorms or hail, and windstorms. The pace and severity of these climate driven natural catastrophes is accelerating. In many regions, insurance premiums are soaring—or insurance is disappearing altogether. A new term has entered the American vocabulary: “insurance deserts,” where homeowners and businesses can no longer obtain affordable, comprehensive coverage.
Climate scientists are unequivocal: extreme weather will intensify. Increasingly, insurance industry leaders are saying the same—some warning privately that the system itself is under existential strain.
What happens when the mechanism designed to absorb risk can no longer do so?
The Project
We propose a series of cinematic documentaries that clearly and viscerally reveal the human and economic consequences of this unfold ing crisis.
Despite the scale of the threat, most Americans have not yet grasped its severity or its underlying causes. Coverage of individual disasters is often vivid, but fragmented—rarely connecting the dots between climate change, the accelerating frequency of catastrophic events, and the growing instability of the insurance system that underpins the economy. This series will make those connections unavoidable.
This proposal is, most of all, the brainchild of David Gelber, who spent 20 years as a producer at 60 Minutes and was Executive Producer of the Emmy Award–winning series Years of Living Dangerously, widely regarded as one of the most powerful documentary series ever produced on climate change.
The Approach
Over a 12-month period, we will produce a series of documentaries, each about a half-hour long, focused on a major extreme weather event.
We will follow families and communities from the onset of disaster through its aftermath—capturing not just the destruction, but the long tail of consequences: displacement, financial strain, and the struggle to rebuild in an increasingly uncertain future.
Each episode will focus on a different type of catastrophe—floods, wildfires, droughts, windstorms—across diverse regions of the United States. Individually, these films will be powerful. Together, they will re- veal a larger, unmistakable pattern: a system under mounting stress. We already have distribution options that will ensure that the series reaches a large audience.
The Insurance Story
Running through every episode will be a deeper, less visible narrative: the growing strain on the insurance industry itself. Insurers are the “canaries in the coal mine” of climate risk. But unlike miners, they cannot simply exit when danger becomes clear. Instead, they are retreating selectively—raising rates, withdrawing coverage, and leaving entire regions exposed.
What does this mean for homeowners, for financial markets, and for the broader economy?
We will answer that question by telling the stories of what happens
when people who thought they were protected discover they’re not—and what that means for everyone else.
We’ll track how insurers respond in real time—during and after catastrophic events—and examine the widening gap between what the industry understands and what it is able —or willing —to do.
Our editorial guidance will include two of the nation’s leading experts on climate risk and insurance:
ï Dave Jones, former California Insurance Commissioner, now Director of the Climate Risk Initiative at UC Berkeley School of Law
ï Dr. Alice Hill, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations
The Pilot
We’ll begin with a pilot episode examining the Altadena Fire in the foothills of Los Angeles, one of the costliest extreme weather events of 2025. The New Yorker’s Bill McKibben will be the correspondent for this episode. He’ll be in Los Angeles to tell the Altadena story. He’ll work closely with Professor Dave Jones, former California Insurance Commissioner and current director of the Climate Risk Initiative at UC Berkeley. Jones has cited the Altadena fire as a prime example of the “uninsurable future” created by the climate crisis.
The fire destroyed approximately 10,000 homes, including a devastating share of Altadena’s historically Black community, and exposed the growing dangers of the wildland–urban interface, where development
meets increasingly volatile landscapes.
This story is not only about loss. It is about vulnerability—and who bears it.
Why Now?
This series would have been important at any point over the past 10 years. Insurers have gone from absorbing roughly $100 billion to now $148 billion in annual weather-related losses.
But the window for understanding—and responding—is closing. We are entering a period of intensified warming. Forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the World Meteorological Organization suggest the coming year could be the hottest on record, increasing the likelihood of severe flooding, pro- longed drought, and large-scale wildfires.
The risks are no longer theoretical. They are landing in devastating losses and compounding, accelerating, and outpacing the systems designed to manage them.
The Goal
Our goal is simple: to make this crisis visible, comprehensible, and impossible to ignore.
Because when insurance fails, the consequences do not remain confined to one industry. They ripple outward—through housing markets, banking systems, municipal budgets, and ultimately, the stability of the broader economy.
This is not just a climate story. It is a story about systemic risk that threatens our way of life.
And yet, despite this risk, one which grows more threatening every year, media coverage of it is at a low ebb. That’s why we’re committed to rekindling public awareness of the greatest threat we face.
The Team
David Gelber – Executive Producer
Award-winning producer at 60 MINUTES for 20 years, and Executive Producer of Peter Jennings Reporting at ABC News for three years. He was the Executive Producer of the Emmy Award-winning Showtime documentary Years of Living Dangerously, acclaimed as one of the finest documentary series on climate change ever produced.
Sasha Schell – Producer and Camera
Documentary filmmaker and open-source investigator at the Berkeley Human Rights Center. His work blends digital investigative methods and traditional reporting. He spent 3 years at PBS FRONTLINE investigating conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan.
Jon Meyersohn – Producer
Award-winning producer and director of television documentaries. Beginning at CBS News and ABC News. Jon has produced in-depth documentary series for History, Vice, National Geographic, CBS News, and Paramount+. He worked closely with David on Years of Living Dangerously.
Tracy Wholf – Producer
Award-winning journalist and senior producer reporting on climate, energy policy, sports and much more for CBS News, ABC News, ESPN, and PBS Newshour.
Bill McKibben – Correspondent
Bill McKibben is an American environmentalist, author, and journalist who has written extensively on the impacts of global warming. His most recent book, Here Comes the Sun (2025) is about the state of the environmental challenges facing humanity and future prospects. Time Magazine has described Bill as “the world’s best green journalist.”
Set on the legendary and stunning Nantucket island, BRIGHTER STARS tells the story of James Miller, an ambitious young man who dreams of being the next big star of Hollywood’s Golden Age. However, James’ heart has long belonged to his childhood friend, Harry Goulart, with whom James shared his first real intimacy. When Harry announces his engagement to the kind and intelligent Nancy Garofalo, James is distraught and his dreams are threatened. That is, until he meets Marco Ferreira, a newcomer to the island who quickly falls for James and encourages the troubled young man to embrace the strength within him. As love and lust come to a head, the Great Depression sweeps the island community, forcing James to fight for survival, protect his beloved home, and strive for a better future beneath the promise of BRIGHTER STARS.
PROJECT BACKGROUND
Much like the ambitions of its main character, BRIGHTER STARS began as an ambitious dream. Author Logan Kelly first began thinking about the story of James Miller back in 2013 but didn’t begin serious work on it until late 2019, when he finally sat down to outline the historical epic. Then, came the COVID-19 pandemic. During those many months, Kelly finished the outline and decided he had no choice but to finally begin the book itself.
However, even in those early days, Kelly was dreaming of something bigger, something that would bring audiences together for an event that (despite its historical setting) would hold a mirror up to our current world and inspire hope. Indeed, it was a dream as big as the movies. Following his move to the New York Metro Area, Kelly was introduced to rising New York actor Mark William (BroadwayWorld Award Winner) and his manager Preston Ridge, whose experience in the world of independent film includes the likes of the Academy Award nominated The Whales of August, notable for being the last film of screen legend Bette Davis. Following a successful reading of the project at Manhattan’s legendary Studio 353 in August 2026, the trio locked in a pre production script of which they are most proud.
Since then, the team has been hard at work preparing BRIGHTER STARS ready for a 2026 production, which included rounding out their package. After all, James Miller is nothing without his Marco Ferreira, and in March 2026, they found him in Game of Thrones legend, Lino Facioli. A promising star from the age of 10, Facioli (also known for Sex Education, The Boy in the Mirror, Masters of the Air) has become an integral member of the team, bringing his flawless talent, powerful insight, and unmatched drive to the role and his involvement.
Now, no longer a trio, but an ever-growing team of creatives, the BRIGHTER STARS family is honored to partner with Filmmakers Collaborative Fiscal Sponsorship program, as they move forward toward production later this year.
THE IMPACT
The hunger for more queer stories has been palpable over the last decade thanks to hits such as Call Me by Your Name and Love, Simon. As the audiences who fell in love with these stories have matured, Brighter Stars will cater to the prime adult age demographics across the LGBTQIA+ community and give them an epic the likes of which they’ve never seen before and have long sought out. In a time when our modern world has become as tumultuous as the one James Miller fought to survive, the need for movies like BRIGHTER STARS has never been greater. Our story is designed to give strength and hope to not only our queer viewers, but all audiences who have ever felt othered or rejected by society, and remind them that they’re dreams are possible, as long as they hold true to those they love.
INFORMATION AND MATERIALS
If you would like to know more about the project, we are happy to share production materials, including our complete Pitch Deck, Synopsis, screenplay, and budget sheet. Please contact a member of the BRIGHTER STARS team or Logan Kelly.
brighterstarsmovie@gmail.com
logankellyinquiries@gmail.com
On Summersweet Pond, third in the Threatened Species Film Series, celebrates the wonderfully interconnected interactions in the web of life found at freshwater ecosystems, from Buttonbush to Bee to Beaver. The film explores how resident and migratory species implicitly depend upon the health of freshwater communities, and the threats to the biota of ponds, while taking the viewer on a journey through the beauty of four seasons of pond life.
Although filmed primarily in Eastern Massachusetts, the series has broad national appeal, as demonstrated by the national and international success of its predecessors Beauty on the Wing: Life Story of the Monarch Butterfly and The Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay. The Threatened Species film series covers meadow, marsh, dune, backyards, woodlands, shoreline, and freshwater and salt pond habitats.
The mission of Kim Smith Films and the Threatened Species Series is to educate and to promote the stewardship of endangered and threatened species. The natural beauty of Essex, Middlesex, and Suffolk Counties plays an integral role in creating an awareness to conserve our shared environment. Celebrating the beauty of wildlife and their habitats is not only a place where we can all meet but a lens focused on what we can become.
We recently received letters of interest from American Public Television for both On Summersweet Pond and Saint Peter’s Fiesta, our next two documentaries currently in production. The letters of interest demonstrate confidence in our ability to offer beautiful and educational films to public television programing and is especially noteworthy for our underwriting partners.
For more information about the film, underwriting, and to see a longer sample, please contact kimsmith.designs1@gmail.com
