Texas Sugar

Project type: Fiction Short
Project status: Development
Writer/Director/Actor: Howard Campbell
Producer: Misha Zvagilskiy
 
Email: howard.campbelljr27@gmail.com
 

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

Logline

After finding what he thinks is the perfect couple, a determined twenty year old boy turns to escorting in order to support his terminally ill grandfather.

Synopsis

Set in a rural, scarce trailer park in Rio Grande Valley of Southern Texas, Junior Armond longs to find an easier and quicker way to make money to buy medication to ease his grandfather’s autoimmune disease pain. Not far from their city is South Padre Island, which is home to upper class Texans and out-of-towners who vacation there each winter. When Junior finds a vacationing couple willing to pay him for escorting services, he begins to wonder if he can escape his circumstances all together, rather than a one-off randevu.
 

Meet the Filmmakers

Howard Campbell – Writer/Director/Actor
Howard Campbell is an African American and El Salvadorian actor, director and writer. He got his BFA at the New York Film Academy. He is currently attending UCLA for his masters degree and will be graduating in May 2023.

While attending college, he began booking small spots in television as an actor, while simultaneously shooting his own written short films as a director. In 2019, Howard launched his own film production company, HoHoww Productions before the release of his first budgeted short film Sick Boys Die Alone. This short film was in the 2020/2021 film festival circuit, received rave reviews, and has taken home the awards for “Best Drama” and “Best Director” at the Los Angeles Indie Short Festival. SBDA can currently be found on Amazon Prime and Youtube. On the acting side, Howard can be seen in an array of different projects including Snowfall (FX), The Boys (Amazon Prime), and AP Bio (Peacock).

Misha Zvagilskiy – Producer
Misha’s latest work as a producer includes the feature film Nexus Dream, premiering next year at a major festival. He is Howard Campbell’s long-time producing partner. Together they had a successful proof of concept short film titled Sick Boys Die Alone that has won numerous awards, bringing them career-changing pitches that subsequently led to the start of Howard’s debut feature film development, which will go into production next year. Apart from working with Howard, Misha has years of experience in the music video industry, producing videos for many known artists such as “Little Big”, “MK”, and “Teddy Swims”. He has worked alongside some of the best directors in the field. Since 2021 he has also started producing commercials. The latest one was for one of the biggest NFT projects called Azuki, and he is currently in prep for a national TV commercial.

Contact

For inquiries, please contact fiscalsponsorship@filmindependent.org.