The First Page, In Motion.

For the past year and a half I’ve been writing my first novel, Upon a Hill of Broken Shadows. This short film is the first page of that book come to life. A glimpse into the emotional and psychological landscape of the world I’ve been creating. I’ve always been drawn to the spaces between things: light and shadow, myth and memory, the personal and the political. This film lives in those liminal spaces. It doesn’t give you a full map—but it gives you fragments, gestures, textures. A meditation on inherited silence and how we learn to see, or unsee, one another.

We spend so much time tangled in the belief that the world is happening to us, as if we’re just passive bystanders to a reality already set in stone. We exist in this place, in this moment, where things are the way they are—and yet, we forget to acknowledge our role in shaping it. In the quiet moments when we turn a blind eye, or the times we choose complacency, we participate in the very system we claim to question.

Sometimes we veil our eyes to the chaos around us out of self-preservation or simply because it’s easier. At its worst, we delay our acknowledgement until it directly affects us. But when we choose to live in that space, we’re not grounded in truth. And when truth is lost, what version is not born out of deception? In that blur, what are we left with? What do we do, when the reality we’ve been taught to see is shattered by the very lies we’ve chosen to believe? This is the journey I sent my characters on a year and a half ago. A reflection of myself, my friends, family, community, everyone I've met, and those I have yet to meet. No matter who you are, the burning question remains the same: what do we owe one another?