Film Independent’s Fiscal Sponsorship program opens the door to nonprofit funding for independent filmmakers and media artists.
 

Logline

Grieving parents struggle with the loss of their daughter. An elegy on grief.

Synopsis

A married couple sit numb, disconnected from each other. We see their shadows express the world of emotions that the human beings cannot. The shadows are desperate to connect to their bodies that remain trapped in grief. In an extraordinary moment, the shadow of their deceased daughter returns, and ushers the parents’ shadows through a waltz of their once happy life. The daughter is able to connect the parents with their grief, and ultimately, to each other.
 

Meet the Filmmakers

Will McCormack — Writer/Director
Will McCormack is a writer, producer, director and actor. As a writer, Will was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Celeste and Jesse Forever. Other writing credits include Toy Story 4 and for television, A to Z. As a producer, Will and his partner Rashida Jones, executive produced the hit show Claws for TNT. He is currently writing Challenger Deep for Disney and The War and Treaty for Gilbert Films with Craig Borten. As an actor, Will has appeared in numerous TV shows and films including The Sopranos and Brothers and Sisters.

Michael Govier — Writer/Director
Michael Govier is a writer, actor and director. His play The King’s Proposal, was Highly Recommended in the Chicago Reader and Critics Pick in Time Out Chicago. He has co-written two different short films that he also starred in: Best Friends Forever, which was an Official Selection at the Austin Film Festival and Space for Rent which an Official Selection at Dances with Films in Los Angeles and an Official Selection at the Catalina Film Festival. As an actor he has been in over a dozen national commercials. He currently is writing and directing the short animated film If Anything Happens I Love You with his partner Will McCormack.

Maryann Garger — Producer
Maryann Garger was most recently a producer on the hit Lego film franchise, Lego Ninjago starring Jackie Chan and directed by Charlie Bean, Bob Logan and Paul Fisher for Warner Brothers Studios. She was a producer on the acclaimed DreamWorks and Aardman Animation comedy adventure Flushed Away, directed by David Bowers and Sam Fell, which swept the 2006 Annie Awards with five wins and three nominations and earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Animated Feature.

She later reunited with Bowers producing his 2009 feature Astro Boy for Imagi/Summit Entertainment. Garger’s producing credits also include the award-winning animated theatrical short First Flight, which screened to acclaim at film festivals including SXSW, Tribeca and Montreal International. She also produced the theatrical Lego Ninjago short, The Master and two animated Astro Boy shorts. Among her upcoming feature releases is the DreamWorks animated family comedy B.O.O.: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations, for director Tony Leondis.

Garger began her career at Disney, on the feature Pocahontas, before segueing to a 20-year tenure at DreamWorks. There, she was among the first employees to build DreamWorks’ animation division, under Jeffrey Katzenberg, and rose through the ranks from Production Manager to Executive of Production, working on such memorable titles as Madagascar, Shrek, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and Prince of Egypt. Following that, she worked for several years at Warner Bros.

On the television side, Garger was the Supervising Producer on the satirical DreamWorks & Fox prime time animated series Neighbors from Hell, which aired on TBS.

She currently is in pre-production on a hybrid feature film to be released in 2021 as well as a consulting producer on Paramount’s SpongeBob Squarepants Movie 3 to be released in 2020. Finally she is in production, producing on an animated short teaming with director/writers Will McCormack and Michael Govier.

Contact

For inquiries, please contact fiscalsponsorship@filmindependent.org.