Projects in Production
Artemis Rising has a full slate of exciting films and other media projects in the works
A House on Fire is an allegorical feature film script set in a world where trauma and mental illness are represented as “curses.” It follows a woman plagued by a rare curse of fire. She and her friends set out in search of help, discovering she is a “Cursebreaker” – someone who has the ability to break their curse and prevent it from being passed on. However, this means the curse manifests in the most destructive ways possible, typically killing its host and endangering those around them. Filmmaker: Nicole Melillo
This documentary is the story of the pioneering researchers, doctors, and former addicts fighting for the ability to better understand ibogaine and bring its healing potential to the mainstream. Filmmaker: Lucy Walker
A Test of Civilization takes viewers on an emotional roller-coaster ride around the globe documenting and bringing to light the never-before-told story of the only intergovernmental effort to rescue the Austrian and German Jews, beginning in 1938. Set against the backdrop of an encroaching war, the film unfolds like a thriller as President Roosevelt sends his top negotiator George Rublee to Nazi Germany to bargain for the safe emigration of the Reich’s Jews. Filmmakers: Katharina Otto-Bernstein, Debi Wisch, Keith Barish
Alive! >>
A dazzling animated coming-of-age documentary following two young women restarting their lives after nearly dying from eating disorders in their youth. Now at the beginning of their healing, their lively delayed growing-up journey begins. Filmmakers: Kristine Stolakis, Anya Rous and Jess Devaney
The Montana Hi-Line is the most remote place in America’s lower 48. Small, dying towns, farms, ranches, and oil fields checker the landscape as sprawling plains, like a sea of grass, stretch as far as the eye can see. In this vast remoteness, organized crime feed on the vulnerable with drugs and human trafficking. In the face of climate change and wild fires, farmers and ranchers struggle to send their children to college, who after receiving an education, have little interest in returning home to work the land. Those who stay are not only connected by this landscape’s violent history, but the resilience to make positive change. Filmmakers: Neil Gelinas and Amy Berg
A documentary film about the life and inspirational leadership of Mario Cuomo, the former New York Governor. Filmmakers: George, Teddy, and Peter Kunhardt
A screenplay by Tyler Hisel from the novel “An Infinity of Mirrors” by Richard Condon (“The Manchurian Candidate”, “Prizzi’s Honor”). Filmmaker: Edoardo Ponti
A film centered on the life and legacy of Artemisia Gentileschi, a trailblazing female artist of the 17th century, and the struggles of female artists over the last 400 years to achieve gender equity. Filmmakers: Nicole Shipley and Kathryn Everett
How V, (formally known as Eve Ensler) changed the understanding of body image and sexuality when she first shared her controversial award winning play, The Vagina Monologues, in 1996. Witnessing the effect this had on her audience, a global movement was born out of the powerful accounts of women whose experiences make up the staggering statistic that 1 in 3 women will be sexually assaulted, raped or violated in their lifetime. With over 7 billion people on the planet today, that is over one billion women. Filmmaker: Deborah Anderson
A film about an obsessed conductor, Benjamin Zander, trying to unravel the mystery behind Ludwig van Beethoven’s ground-breaking symphony, known to the world as Beethoven’s 9th. Filmmakers: Christer Gaardmann Zall, Mikkel Gaardmann Zall, Sigrid Dyekjær
An inspirational, upbeat and poetic documentary that explores the foundational role that bees play in sustaining humanity, the reasons for their sharp population decline (a.k.a. “colony collapse disorder”) and how we can regenerate bees worldwide, so they are once again part of a thriving ecosystem. Filmmakers: Josh and Rebecca Tickell
A film that will reveal how our trauma history impacts all of our relationships. Filmmaker: Michelle Esrick
Filmmaker Robb Moss has filmed his close friends for over forty years. Starting with Riverdogs (1978), Robb chronicled his friends’ outdoor, rent-free life on the Colorado River. In The Same River Twice (2003), he reckoned with their move from being young and naked to clothed and middle-aged. Interspersing moments from these previous two films, The Bend in The River (2025) revisits his friends — now in their 70s and grappling with their legacy and remaining years — culminating an intimately observed trilogy of the inexorable flow of aging and the unfinished project of living. Filmmaker: Robb Moss, Lisa Remington
>> Black and Jewish in America
“Black and Jewish in America,” a new series from Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. will chart the parallel, intersecting, and forking streams of Black and Jewish experience in America. Over the course of four, hour-long episodes, the series will follow the story of the Black and Jewish relationship chronologically, tracing its waxing and waning in the context of broader American and world history. Filmmaker: McGee Media
Hamza Walker is a man on a mission that will force us all to confront our feelings about America’s long history of racism. He intends to stage a high profile at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art to be used as a prism through which to explore what America should do with its 800 or more Confederate monuments, which stand as symbols of its long history of racism and segregation. The MONUMENTS exhibition will feature a dozen or more actual Confederate monuments with new works of art commissioned by contemporary artists. Filmmaker: Debi Wisch
A short narrative drama that explores the mind of a woman with depression through a fantastical ride in a NYC Taxicab. Filmmaker: Nicole Melillo.
A feel-good sitcom format film to address the devastating absurdity of life in the mid-19th Century American South. Filmmaker: RaMell Ross
A documentary that focuses on a groundbreaking approach in which judges, doctors, police, and family members urge, and at times compel, people with serious mental illness into effective, humane, outpatient care. Set in the rust-belt city of Akron, its protagonists are the participants in two court programs supporting people with debilitating illnesses — those who take the meds, appear before the judges, and struggle for both their dignity and their sanity. Filmmakers: Ken Rosenberg and Peter Miller
The story of the tenacious young women who compete in the annual Girl Scout Cookie sale in a quest to be crowned top seller. This heartwarming, visually rich, and character-driven documentary follows a range of Scouts through a single sale season, tracing their inner journeys and offering a multifaceted look at coming of age in America today. Director/Producer: Alysa Nahmias, Producers: Gregory Kershaw, Michael Dweck
A film exposing the hidden origins of the Christian Nationalist movement that seeks to radically dismantle US democracy. A bullet through the heart of a beloved doctor in Upstate New York opens this psychological thriller tracing America’s the demolition of abortion rights to a hippie evangelical commune high in the Swiss Alps. Director/Producer: Laura Dawn, Daron Murphy, Jehane Noujaim
A love story like no other, directed by Academy Award-winning Orlando von Einsiedel, Cycling for Love is an epic, inspiring true-life adventure about the search for self-belief and risking everything for what your heart tells you. In 1977, PK, a 23-year-old Indian artist from the ‘untouchable’ caste, picked up a handful of paintbrushes and a bicycle and set off on a 7,000- mile cross-continent mission – to find Lotta, the woman who captured his heart. While PK’s motivation was to find Lotta, along the way, he learned that he must love and accept himself before he can be ready to fully love someone else. Filmmakers: Orlando von Einsiedel, Chloe Leland
Incidents of hate crimes against Asian-Americans have increased as the pandemic rages on, with many Americans blaming their fellow citizens-of-color for the spread of the COVID-19 virus. In addition to this, our film tells the story of a remarkably courageous Asian-American woman who refuses to back down from those who would have silenced her. She has rallied not only against one divisive and delusional man in the Oval Office, but against an entire establishment filled with figures aiming to erase her. Filmmakers: Sandra Luckow / Nicholas Daniele / Joseph Schroeder
A film about social media and mental health with a focus on youth perspectives.Filmmakers: Crystal McCrary, Beth Kojima, and Annie Sundberg
EARTH CAMP ONE, a feature-length work of creative nonfiction, is about filmmaker Jennie Livingston losing four family members in five years. It’s a meditation on impermanence — exploring living in a world where everything and everyone disappears; and where the process of grieving the dead is as imperfect as the challenge of appreciating the living. The film is both a first-person story and a complex animated essay on how our culture views impermanence. Director: Jennie Livingston
Ebony Magazine chronicled a 70-year period of time when almost no one else was paying attention to African Americans. During that time, it told stories of black struggle; it told the story of the civil rights movement; and it told of a changing America. But Ebony also told inspirational stories of black success, showed the burgeoning arrival of a black middle class, and chronicled black cultural as well. Most important, it was a magazine where black people could see themselves—not just in the articles and photo spreads, but in the advertisements, as well. Filmmaker: Lisa Cortes
A journey of South Sudan’s National Basketball Team and the transformative power of sport in unifying a nation. Filmmakers: Beth Hubbard, Anteneh Addisu
This film uses the daring escape of outspoken human rights activist and North Korean defector, Hyeonseo Lee, as a jumping-off-point to penetrate the reality of life inside the most mysterious country in the world, and to reveal the broader psychological tolls of defection. At the tender age of 17, Hysenseo crossed the frozen Yalu River on the northern border into China. Intending to go only for a short, rebellious stay, she never returned to her country. Almost sold into prostitution and at one point arrested and interrogated, Hyeonseo hid her identity for over ten years as an illegal in China. Her tale of bravery and daring is also one of loneliness and disconnection. Filmmakers: Madeleine Gavin / Jana Edelbaum / Rachel Cohen
Heartbreak is a docuseries, examining the social and biological impact of heartbreaking loss through the cinema verité lens of five subjects who are in the process of writing themselves through therapy, cutting edge science and alternative forms of healing. Filmmakers: Nadine Schiff-Rosen; Maria Shriver
HERE I AM is a feature-length documentary capturing the transformative journey of Syrian-American musician and former punk-rocker Rayya Elias as she sets out on a romantic relationship with New York Times best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert, and attempts to record her first music album in the final twelve months of her life. Filmmaker: Nick Francis
HEROES JOURNEY is a film about seven young amputee veterans who attempt to climb the world’s tallest mountains on every continent as a journey of recovery and transformation. Filmmaker: Frieda Mock
During her childhood, Hunter Austin was enamored with the character Cindy Prescott from the popular kids’ show, THUNDER. After turning 50, Austin finally got to meet the woman behind that role — Melora Hardin. Hardin was fascinated by her fan’s life. Days filled by animal actors in an enchanting home, it all seemed so magical. But things weren’t as they appeared. The course of Austin’s life had been changed after she was raped at the age of 7. HUNTER’S THUNDER follows Austin’s journey to face the traumas of her path and start her path to healing. Director: Melora Hardin; Producer: James Younger.
>> Hurricane Hate (working title)
Kim A. Snyder’s HURRICANE HATE is her second look at Shelbyville, a small rural town in the middle of Tennessee’s bible belt. Using footage of the recent White Lives Matter March there, archival footage, and scenes from her previous film about the town, WELCOME TO SHELBYVILLE, Snyder attempts to answer, “What happens when hate comes to your town?” Director: Kim A. Snyder
>> The Image of the Black in Western Art (working title)
Development of the Book Series The Image of the Black in Western Art into a documentary series. This grant will provide producers with a discretionary fund for research to the frame narrative, and for the development of sales materials to approach creative and production partners. Filmmakers: Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Dyllan McGee, Geralyn Dreyfous, Alison Taylor
Infused explores the hidden landscapes of tea with Henrietta Lovell, “The Tea Lady,” venturing into the lives of the incredible people behind our tea. Offering the audience a glimpse into a sustainable future that can change both the tea world and our own lives for the better. Filmmaker: Jeremy Seifert
>>Inmate Corrections Television
A film about the Inmate Corrections Television (ICTV) that shows a first-person account of incarceration that follows Sam Ormes’ incredible effort to bring a sense of humanity to the long forgotten men of Miami’s Dade-County Jail. Producer: Trisha Koury; Directors: Myles Kane and Josh Koury
A film about the life and art of Judy Chicago and how the issues she tackled at the beginning of her career over sixty years ago still reverberate in culture today. Filmmaker: Lisa Remington
Book banning is front and center in the media on a daily basis – including the international press who are deeply astounded by what is happening in the United States of America to freedom of expression and freedom of information. As an unprecedented wave of book banning is sparked in Texas, Florida, and beyond, librarians under siege join forces as unlikely defenders fighting for intellectual freedom on the front lines of democracy. Filmmaker: Kim A. Snyder
A film based on a unique and heart-warming conversation between Nelson Mandela and his grandchildren. It begins in Johannesburg in 2009, with Ndaba Mandela gently leading his grandfather into a room where his other grandkids eagerly await him. And it continues, following four of Mandela’s grandchildren today, reflecting on life with their larger-than-life Granddad and his legacy. It ends with Kweku at Mandela’s grave in Qunu on the day of his funeral. Directors: Kewku Mandela, Jens Meurer
A documentary about the acclaimed artist and activist Marilyn Minter. Minter, who is approaching her 80th year, is a leading voice in the fight for women’s rights. She is a recovered alcoholic and drug addict who speaks openly and with empathy about her own struggles as a means of helping others. She is also one of the nation’s leading voices in abortion rights who has created provocative, impactful, and newsworthy films and art works to this end featuring warrior women including Gloria Steinem, Miley Cyrus, Monica Lewinsky, Mickalene Thomas and Lizzo. Filmmakers: Jennifer Ash, Amanda Benchley, and Debi Wisch
This film explores Henderson’s roots and traces his unique path to becoming an acclaimed artist and renowned blues musician. Through a series of interviews, archival photos, and footage of current musical and art events, Henderson will tell us in his own words about his wide-ranging exploration of the arts—from his early days in the 1960s at the San Francisco Art Institute, painting and making experimental films, to playing music with rock and blues greats such as Elvin Bishop, Sunnyland Slim, Mike Bloomfield and John Lee Hooker, who dubbed him “The Blues Professor.” Filmmakers: Ethan Wiley & Cheryl Haines
A NYC ensemble comedy in the style of Woody Allen centered around the neighbors living on one block on the upper east side at 74th and Park. Filmmakers: Rachel Isreal and Jill Kargman
“The Peanut Roastery Project” is a direct offshoot of the documentary film, “Mothers of Chibok” by ‘Kachi Benson. The project aims to help build an infrastructure for the protagonists of the documentary to further their farming skills and peanut production levels. Over the three-year period that we spent making the film, we witnessed first-hand how much the hard work of our protagonists was often diminished by middlemen who undercut their profits, leaving them with barely enough to sustain their families. We want to change this dynamic and place the power directly in the women’s hands. The project will also educate them with better farming practices that can be passed down to the next generation, creating a legacy of self-sufficiency, dignity, and hope. Filmmakers: Joel ‘Kachi Benson (director), Rachel Halilej
Out of the underground dance clubs on the South Side of Chicago, a group of friends turn a new sound into a global movement. This is the never-before-told real story of the birth of House Music in Chicago. It’s a tale of fragile beginnings in the early 1980s, set in a racially divided, homophobic city—where perhaps the only oasis for young Black, Brown and Queer people was an underground club called The Warehouse—a place where a new-found freedom (called “democracy on the dance floor” by one of our characters) was about to launch a new kind of Music. Filmmakers: HiddenLight Productions and One Story Up
If you look at the world’s worst problems they all lead back to a single cause; individuals with inhumane pathologies (malignant narcissism, sociopathy, anti-social behavior etc.). People with good intentions are often blind to these strategies because they cannot imagine behaving the way a narcissist does. But, with education we can understand how narcissists think and operate, and learn to spot them before they get to incur more damage.Filmmakers: Mark Vicente/ Scott Altomare/Lyn Lear
A documentary following one of Hamilton’s musical leads, Renée Elise Goldsberry, who played Angelica Schuyler, as she tells behind-the-scenes stories through her eyes and shares hundreds of hours of never-before-seen footage during the creation of the musical that has become a global phenomenon. Directors: Chris Bolan and Melissa Haizlip, Producers: Steven Cantor and Jamie Schutz
A two-part film chronicling the story of New York City across the two decades of the 21st Century. Filmmaker: Ric Burns
The Story of Iboga and Ibogaine tells the astounding unknown story of what might be the scientific discovery of our generation. Back in 1962, a teenage psychonaut in New York City named Howard Lotsof experimented with an obscure psychedelic from the root bark of a West African shrub and recognized its unique therapeutic potential. Filmmakers: Julian Cautherley (Producer), Lucy Walker (Director & Producer)
The purpose of this project is to paint a portrait of rural America through the lens of one of its oldest institutions – the United States Postal Service. The USPS is a vital public infrastructure,
POSTMORTEM, a multi-generational play about one woman’s reckoning with her difficult past and a
feature-length documentary about its staging, explores the risks of confronting injustice and the power of
the creative process to heal. Filmmakers: Marilyn Ness and Beth Levison
A documentary that traces the history of the Equal Rights Amendment to illustrate how across race, class, and gender, the desire to access white male power has undermined the most obvious piece of social progress since the abolition of slavery. Filmmaker: Sabaah Folayan
For nearly forty years, Ross McElwee has made closely observed and profoundly subjective documentaries about how his personal life intersects with the world at large. But the sudden death of his son Adrian from fentanyl, it causes him to reassess his approach to filmmaking and to his own life’s work. Filmmaker: Mark Meatto
A follow-up to MissRepresentation, The Revolution is about how a steady dose of disparaging portrayals in streaming and social media on top of persistent cultural norms degrade and dehumanize girls and women. Filmmaker: Jennifer Siebel Newsom
THE ROOT TO GOOD HEALTH is fundamentally a film about healing mind, body and spirit through offering new perspectives and practices related to modern dentistry. Filmmakers: Ross Kauffman and Robin Honan
The K-Pop system is famous for producing global superstars under extraordinary pressure, offering unparalleled levels of fame while maintaining control. As trainees are prepared for the world stage, they hone their skills to perfection, often while enduring extreme challenges.Filmmakers: Diane Quon, Janet Yang, Eugene Yi
>> Sam Project, Untitled Documentary
This documentary tells the poignant story of a father and son who learn to collaborate in order to build a relationship that transcends the boundaries of prison walls. It follows Sam Bader, a former film producer, and his estranged son, Omar. Sam was the first person to entrust me (Nadav Kurtz, director) with editing a feature. But in 2006, just weeks before we debuted our film Street Thief at the Tribeca Film Festival, he was arrested for armed robbery. Omar was eight years old when the police came looking for Sam and, during questioning, he gave them his father’s phone number to help them find him. Sam was sentenced to 24 years and Omar has been wracked with guilt ever since. Today, thirteen years later, Sam is still in prison and Omar is an aspiring filmmaker himself (as well as writer, actor and musician). Filmmakers: Nadav Kurtz/Diane Quon
A story of an elderly couple surviving the near-isolation in rural Ireland. Filmmaker: Ron Harrison
A dreamlike 1950s town square built inside a warehouse near San Diego is the site of a unique experiment where a memory-care staff works with aging people to recreate solacing scenes from their youth. The caregivers who work in Glenner Town Square will harness the complex power of nostalgia through participants with dementia and their families. Filmmaker: Robert Greene
A film that revisits five personal accounts who previously shared their lives to highlight the lifelong medical, psychological and generational impact of child sexual assault. Filmmakers: Alexandra Dickson Gray, Vanessa Roth, Colin Nash
>> Unleashed Empowerment Videos
o support a new TV Series which profiles female change makers and entrepreneurs who are making a difference around the world. Director: Filmmaker: Kara Ross
A musical event, presented in live theatrical form, that explores the global climate catastrophe and the generation of mavericks who are demanding change be made. The production targets a new generation of theatergoers, engaging them in a new format of art with a story that resonates with their passions. Filmmaker/Producer: Join the Becoming, LLC; Antonio Marion, Executive Producer; Written by V & Justin Tranter.
A film about an unregulated wilderness rehabilitation camp where a sickening truth is uncovered about the camp’s leader. This story encapsulates a whole generation of teenagers that have lost the most pivotal years of their lives to various wilderness therapy rehabilitation camps across the nation. Filmmakers: Spencer King and Ali Edwards
WOMEN OF THE MOUNTAIN is a 60-minute documentary about three women who run the longest ultramarathons, of 120 miles or more, in the highest mountain ranges and three female entrepreneurs who carve out a livelihood in those mountains. The women profiled in the film refuse to be defined by gender, culture, age or the parameters society sets for them: Aparna and Thenlis defy culturally-acceptable roles for women by traversing the Himalayas, a former Olympic cross-country skier fights against her age to compete in a 125-mile race, a mother of five children competes alongside the director in a 200-mile ultramarathon in California’s Sierra Nevada, and a local Native American strives to preserve her tribe’s ancient culture in the mountains they’ve called home for thousands of years. Director/Producer: Rebecca Byerly