Shine Global, Young Filmmakers, And The Power Of Impact Docs

At the Montclair Film Festival, Lost in Jersey sat down with Shine Global—the award-winning team behind War/Dance and Inocente—to explore how real stories drive change far beyond the screen. Co-founders Susan MacLaury and Albie Hecht trace their journey from a family trip to a war zone that inspired War/Dance to an Oscar win for Inocente and a mission to put children’s voices at the center of storytelling.

We unpack two decades of hard-earned lessons: how The Wrong Light unraveled a “rescue” narrative into a deeper truth, why The Harvest brought child labor realities to Congress, and how the team’s newest work investigates the troubled teen industry’s hidden abuses with The Business of Trouble. Along the way, we meet this year’s Resilience Award winners—young filmmakers whose short In Case You Forgot proves that creativity, even music created on a kid’s DJ toy, can carry real emotional power.

If you care about documentary ethics, storytelling as advocacy, and how art moves policy, this live conversation maps both the playbook and the pitfalls of making stories that matter.

Thank you to Montclair Film Festival for having us!

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Transcript

Live From Montclair: Setup

SPEAKER_11 0:00

Hi, listeners. This episode is going to sound a little bit wonky because it was actually recorded live at the Montclair Film Festival at our wonderful event where we interviewed Shine Global and some young filmmakers. So please hang in there and enjoy the episode. I'd like to bring our host tonight to the stage, Rachel Mertens and Jeanette Ashmarin.

SPEAKER_12 0:37

Thank you so much for coming in.

SPEAKER_11 0:48

So thank you very much. And tonight we're celebrating resilience and film and highlighting the incredible work of Shine Global. We'll diamond a mission, how the documentaries come to life, and what it really takes to tell stories that move people and smart change. We'll also meet the winners of Shine Global's 225 New Filmmakers Award.

SPEAKER_12 1:08

The next generation of movie makers showing us what resilience looks like on screen and Global is a nonprofit media company that improves the lives of children by telling powerful stories that raise awareness, promote action, and inspire change. For 20 years, they've produced award-winning films that give a voice to children and families facing adversity around the world.

SPEAKER_11 1:42

I'll go first with Susan McLaurie. She's co-founder and senior advisor of Shine Global, where she served as executive director for nearly 20 years. She's the force behind award-winning films like Wardance, Innocente, The Harvest, The Eagle Righteous, among many others. Susan was also an associate professor of health education at K University for many years. What makes Susan's work so special is how it bridges empathy, education, and impact. Every film she touches moves audiences and inspires change in classrooms, communities, and even policy around the world. Hi, everybody.

SPEAKER_12 2:22

And next we have Albi Hecht. He is the co-founder also of Shine Global and the chair of the board of Shine Global, as well as an award-winning producer. He was the president of Nickelodeon, where he oversaw the development and production of SpongeBob SquarePants, if you guys have heard of that. He also co-created

Meet Shine Global’s Founders

SPEAKER_12 2:45

and executive produced the Kids Choice Awards. And he also then took a stint as the general manager of CNN's headline news network before joining Pocket Watch, where as a chief content officer, he created an executive produced the ME nominated Ryan's Mystery Play Day, which is huge on YouTube. Has over 40 million subscribers. So that is I'll be out.

SPEAKER_08 3:14

Love me or blame me for SpongeBob, it's okay.

SPEAKER_11 3:18

So first we'd love to hear your meeting cute. And then how did you get into Jersey?

SPEAKER_08 3:24

Jersey. And uh it's been an incredibly uh soulmate journey ever since. And uh we got to Jersey in a sort of a roundabout way. I think we resisted it first.

SPEAKER_06 3:49

We resisted it vehemently, actually.

SPEAKER_12 3:52

We've never we've never heard that version. Basically, every person on our podcast has said that.

SPEAKER_06 3:58

I have to say, our good friends Ruth and Don Sarlin were here, and Donnie's here tonight. And um Ruth just sort of waited patiently. We looked at every town in the Hudson, we went up to Rye, we went to Mamarinac, we went to uh Ruth said out to the island. We went to we tried Long Island. And Ruth just said, I'm waiting, you'll end up here. And she was right.

SPEAKER_08 4:20

And we moved on a auspicious day, right? When Kate, my daughter, was uh we just she was a city kid, she loved the city, and so we had to wait till she was going off to college. So the day we packed her off, we packed up and moved to New Jersey.

Origin Story: Northern Uganda

SPEAKER_12 4:34

Yes, I want to also know how did Shine Global come about? What prompted you to start Shine Global?

SPEAKER_06 4:41

The story of these children in northern Uganda actually was the start of everything. We were uh donors to an organization called the African Medical Research and Education Foundation. And from their director, we learned about the civil war that was occurring in northern Uganda. And we learned in particular about this group of children who were forced to flee their homes every single night at dusk and walk several kilometers, sometimes carrying younger brothers and sisters, to get to the safety of a town called Gulu where there was an army presence. Because if they were to have stayed, they risked being kidnapped by the Lord's Resistance Army, which was uh it was an offshoot of the original rebel force that was fighting against the central government of of Uganda, and it was very violent and very dangerous. We convinced the executive director of AMRAF to take us, and and I just want you to know this in a fit of excellent parenting, we took our children with us.

SPEAKER_08 5:42

Into a war zone.

SPEAKER_06 5:43

Into the war zone. Yeah. Um, I don't know, where is child protection services when when kids really need them? And um we went in search of this particular story, but by the time we got to Uganda, the circumstances had changed, and all of the families that had been living independently in their own homes had been herded up and put into an internally displaced persons camp. And so we got there and we thought, oh God, well, what's our story? And and we by chance one day on a tour uh of schools, listening to a headmaster talk endlessly about his school's programs, uh, they mentioned the fact that for the first time in several years, children from the north would be allowed to participate in Uganda's national music and dance festival. And we just looked at each other and we said, That's our story, because we wanted to tell a story that would be real and would be gritty and maybe very sad, but we also wanted to tell it in a way that was hopeful. So when we could show these kids living in this camp, they they live in a camp called Patong, and it had been built to house maybe 5,000 people, but they were maybe as many as ten times that number actually forced to live together, and their life was very, very hard. But when they would rehearse for the music festival, their the singing, their dancing, a whole other side of them came to light, and that was what we wanted the film to reflect.

SPEAKER_08 7:12

And uh first we didn't know we were gonna make a film. I mean, we we kind of thought, well, well, how can we help? And uh Sue was sort of mulling it over and said, Well, we could adopt Patang and Montclair's a big town, and we'll do a fundraiser and maybe we'll send money, we'll be able and I was like, you know, I I don't know anything about fundraiser, but I know how to make a movie, and this sounds like a movie. And Sue was at the time still teaching and social worker, and she's like, Wow, movie, we can make a movie, that's great, right? And I said, Yeah, and you can help.

SPEAKER_06 7:43

And I said, Could I help? I w couldn't even dare to imagine that I could be part of this.

SPEAKER_08 7:49

Absolutely. You're the executive producer. And I remember I was just walked out of the room kind of thinking about it, and then Sue looked and I heard her voice say, Well, that's great, what a great title, right? What do I do? And I said, Well, you raise the money.

SPEAKER_12 8:04

The the that's the hard part, actually. That was hard part.

SPEAKER_08 8:07

When we went into the war zone, it was an incredible experience. And as Sue said, we took our children who was a teenager and a young woman at the time, and and felt this was a chance for them to see another part of the world and what was going on. That was the good part of taking them. But it kind of went awry a little bit when we got in there. We we kind of went on the bus and we were looking at different locations, and one point uh one of the people with us said they gotta go to the bathroom, get off the bus. They went to the front of the bus, and the colonel stopped them and said, You're not getting off the bus. Look out there in the in the bushes. And he said, That's where the rebels are and they're watching us. And we were like, Ooh, this is uh a little more dangerous. We got to our camp to stay where we were staying. Well, first, as we were trooping through the mud and the muck, we were really amazed that my daughter had brought her Gold Lamay sandals into this as a as a way to walk around. And uh, and outside one of the rooms was this really heavy-duty military boots, and we asked the person showing to the room, said, Who what is that? And he said, Well, that belongs to a colonel who was in the Lord's Resistance Army who is staying here on the way to be reconciled with the tribe. They were gonna forgive him, I guess. This is a man who would no less than 20 kids into the army and turn them into deadly child soldiers. And I just remember my son

Making War/Dance Under Fire

SPEAKER_08 9:30

looking at the door and go, killer, killer. I don't know. It was uh scary moments, but we we prevailed.

SPEAKER_12 9:37

Well, you you really prevailed. That was an Oscar-nominated film, your first film that you did. So how did you produce a film at that level for your first the first get out? Did you bring a crew? How did you film it?

SPEAKER_06 9:51

We had an amazing director that Albi found when he was working at uh Spike TV, Sean Fine. And Sean assembled a small but really terrific crew, and they came to Uganda a couple of weeks after we were there, and they scouted. They they went to three two or three different schools, and they found the three kids that they wanted to work with all in one school. And uh it was tough. And you know, I I think about this a lot. There are a couple of scenes in that film. Very few of you have ever seen this film because it's been under litigation for 19 years because of uh the documentary films.

SPEAKER_08 10:32

Yeah, there was amazing films where he he got the trust of them and it it took a while. These kids were so damaged. I mean, Dominic had killed somebody when he was nine years old with a tough. They were tough. But he and I remember there was you know, it was our first film, their first film, and we didn't get any footage for like three weeks, and we were panicked because it cost a lot of money. And we were like, Sean, what's what are you shooting? He goes, I can't shoot yet, I can't shoot you. Because every day he would go out to this tree outside the camp and sit there and wait for Nancy and some of the kids to come out to talk to him. And they would not come out every day. And then after a while, he would be finally Nancy came out and he said, Well, why didn't you meet me? And she said, Well, I was watching you to see if you were gonna come every day and really talk to me. So it took a while for him to get that trust. They got the trust, they shot these incredible films uh segments, one by a grave where she was weeping over her father, and there was the LRA was watching her also there.

SPEAKER_11 11:33

I think that's the key to a lot of what you were saying. Um we spoke before about your documentaries of documentary filmmaking in general, is that you need to get the trust of the people you're filming, and that takes however long it takes.

SPEAKER_06 11:48

And I'm gonna add that I spoke with Nancy this past week. She called actually seeking money. She'd been working for USAID for the last seven years, and of course, all funding has been cut from there. And she she talked really movingly about the impact that that's had on families, especially small children, and how many of them are are dying from AIDS. And I thought, you know, she's one of several of the kids that we've worked with who've gone on to do amazing work themselves. And it's it's I'm sure being in the documentary had something to do with that, but it's it's very moving to see that.

SPEAKER_12 12:26

Well, the next film that we wanted to talk about is the, you know, you've started, you've had a lot of celebrities that have come on board. And I know that it I'm going a little bit chronologically that you had the the the harvest come up, and I believe that Evelyn Goria came on that. You told us a funny story about your first Zoom call with her. Can you share that?

SPEAKER_08 12:48

Yeah, first let me say before you tell that, which is like because we did that first film and it was an amazing journey, one at Sundance, and it you know, went at all these festivals, and it ended up at the Oscars, and we were there, and it was Seuss's first film.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 13:03

And you know, I've been making films for a while, but then we went to make the second film, and Seuss goes, Well, that's the way you do it. You make the film, you go to Sundance, you go to festivals, Oscar and you go to the Oscars, this is how it works.

SPEAKER_12 13:19

You got spoiled off the first.

SPEAKER_08 13:20

Well, we did get spoiled. It was tough to find the funding for the next film, which was amazing. We thought, okay, we did this, we're on our way.

SPEAKER_11 13:27

I mean, you would think that, getting the recognition of being at the Oscars.

SPEAKER_06 13:31

Well, one of the things that we learn to our chagrin, honestly, and has been true all the 20 years since Shine first started, is people who come in to support one film, they come in because of the subject matter. You know, I mean now, yes, at this point I think Shine has a very good reputation, but it still doesn't really bring the big money in for for projects. So I I I was just operating on totally the wrong the wrong preposition. Proposition. So we were really kind of panicked. We didn't know what we were gonna do, how we were gonna find the money to make the harvest. And the harvest was the story of three of the estimated half million American children who leave school for months uh every year to travel with their families across the country to pick different crops. We were we reached out to a friend in LA, and she was a friend of Eva Langoria's agent and Christie, and Christy told Eva what we were doing. And Eva was an activist, and this was her issue. She had been a close friend of Dolores Cuerta, who along with Cesar Chavez, had started the first strikes against farm owners. I attended my first Zoom session ever in a corporate theater and an enormous screen, and we're I'm sitting there, and Eva comes in and she sits down at her table and she introduces herself. Like she needed to introduce herself, right? Um, and um and she I'll never forget, she leaned forward and she said, I am begging you to let me be a part of this film. And it was all I could do not to slide out of my chair. I was I was so surprised by that. And she came on board and um and then I they sent this contract that we had to sign that she had to go first class, she had to fly first class, she had to, you know, get limos, she had to have her hair and makeup done and whatever. And I said, unless she's willing for us to drive her and I'll do her hair and makeup, I can't possibly sign this. We we can't afford any of this. And Chrissy said, you have to sign it, but don't worry, she'll never ask you to do this. And to she never did. And she raised, she and her her close associates raised 80% of the funding for that film.

SPEAKER_08 15:49

She worked the film. She and she has continued to any place that she has put her name. She worked it. She went to Washington with us to show it to congressional leaders. She showed it across the country. She was very committed. Um, we owe a lot to Eva for doing that.

SPEAKER_12 16:04

Impressive. So, Rachel, which movie did you want to look at? Yeah. Well, we should talk about in a sense a the one that won the Oscar. Yeah. So soon after that, you did win the Oscar. So tell us about that.

SPEAKER_06 16:16

I'm laughing because the first time we were nominated for Wardance,

Funding Reality After Awards

SPEAKER_06 16:20

I bought my first and only designer dress of my life. And it was um Donna Karen, I don't know how you pronounce the name. Donna Karen. Karen. Okay, and it was this jersey kind of dress, and I just was defeated by it. I struggled with the shoulders, the shoulders of this dress the entire night. And the dress kept winning, and so I finally get the shoulder things down where they're supposed to be, and we're sitting in the audience, and and now they're gonna announce the the best documentary. And Albi's really excited. He leans over, he goes, This is it, and I go, Don't touch me, don't touch me. And sadly, I but I thought, oh, this is our moment. Our kids are gonna see us, our friends are gonna see us, and they announced the winner, and it's not us.

SPEAKER_08 17:02

You almost got up.

SPEAKER_06 17:03

I wanted to get up to tell the people who'd gotten up in front of us to sit down, but it turns out that they were the winners, so they weren't sitting down, so they were going up to to collect the awards.

SPEAKER_08 17:12

But uh yeah, fortunately, we made another trip there. Sente came to us from again the fines. We we have consistently worked with first-time directors who have gone on to do other things. We we try to find new voices, particularly a lot of women voices in the uh directors. Andrea Fine was one of the directors with him. And they came back to us with a film they were working on about the resilience, about women who were resilient women around the world, and then it sort of fallen apart, but they were totally taken with this one 15-year-old girl in in San Diego who's homeless and was an artist, and they told us about it. They sent us the footage, and it was extraordinarily compelling footage, and she was also undocumented, so a lot of issues we wanted to help tackle with them, and we decided we would take that footage and turn it into a film. At that point, they wanted to do a feature, and I thought we needed to get the film out sooner, and also that just strategically at the time shorts were emerging as a more prominent uh documentary format, and there was less competition, actually. So, from a marketing perspective, I was like, hey, we might have a better shot if we do it as a short. So they were like, okay, let's try to do that. And we uh and we were able to complete that film. I will say there were moments there where, you know, from a talking to the directors and what they get and what they don't get, it's a it's a it's a uh collaboration, a process, but there's there's also these moments where you wish you could do things, but you're dealing with real-life subjects who have real life issues and are um uh in real time. And uh, you know, you fell for innocente Sue kept asking

Eva Longoria And The Harvest

SPEAKER_08 18:50

in the film, um, she's very estranged from her mother. Um, and there's a few scenes in it, but there could have been more, but she wouldn't talk to her mother. And uh, although we kept asking, I think it was eventually was like, okay, this is the film we have, let's work with it. And that happens. So we couldn't go deeper, but I think if you saw the film, you'll feel we went deep enough. It's a very emotional, very compelling, visually stunning. The finds did an amazing job. And to this day, that film is used as our most successful film in outreach. It's used in education, classes for art, uh promoting art education and promoting immigration issues. And Inocente herself is grown into an amazing lady. She's a successful artist, she's a teacher. And just uh last month when we had our gala, she came to speak, and the day before she went out to Brooklyn with the film to show it to uh a community center uh and advocate for arts education. Uh and so she works on it all the time. It's incredibly heartwarming and so.

SPEAKER_12 19:54

And the film Incenta uh is about a homeless girl that is kind of escapes through her art, and she nobody at high school knows that she is homeless, and she now was part of your 20th year gala. It is really an incredible film. I watched it and recommended. So you told us about a film that We didn't tell you anything. You told me we talked to you beforehand.

unknown 20:20

It was all spontaneous.

SPEAKER_12 20:21

There is a film that you spotlighted that was kind of pivotal in your filmmaking career. It became an expose. Can you tell us about the film that changed the The Wrong Light?

SPEAKER_06 20:35

Yeah, we have a film in the festival uh this, I guess, Sunday, The Business of Trouble, and that was an intended investigative film. But the The Wrong Light, which I think was our fourth film, did not start out to be that. It was we we were visited one day by a young woman who'd spent two years in Thailand on a Fulbright uh scholarship, and she went to study one thing, but became fascinated by the sex trafficking of children. And she, in that time that she was in Thailand, she visited several different programs for exploited children, and she came back really enamored with this one program, KOSA, Children of Southeast Asia, and it was run by a man named Mickey Chutesa. And so, you know, one one of the things that's interesting, I'll just take uh as a quick aside. Over the years there have been so many stories that we've learned about that would be would have been really, really fascinating documentaries, but but so often they revolved around a one very charismatic person who was making the difference through their organization. And that was always a challenge for us. We never wanted to make a film that was really telling the story of another organization. And in effect, that's we did we did end up doing that to some extent with Mickey. So Alby and I had a chance in the summer of 2013 to go to Thailand and we went with this young woman, Natalie Yashanka, and we traveled to Northern Thailand to meet Mickey and to see his his um his center and to scout for some of the subjects for the film. And we were just blown away by him. We were really enamored. He wasn't the easiest person to understand. He he was Thai, but he'd spent some of his childhood in the States, and so he spoke passable English, and I'm assuming very good Thai, but because I can't speak a word of it. And he also spoke a dialect of the Mian dialect, which was the language spoken in this remote village in Northern Thailand. And that's where the girls who he he was bringing to his program came from, from this tiny village. And he said, Oh, sure, I'll help you make this film. And by the way, the the golden triangle there is also where all the it's not just drug smuggling, it's child smuggling. I'll take you there. I'll take you to a town meeting up in the village where you'll see the parents decide which children are going to be sold.

SPEAKER_08 23:03

And um and and we'll watch we'll we'll follow them on their trip into Thailand and Well, he he said that the all the girls in the program were ones that were going to be trafficked or that he had rescued from trafficking, and that's was on his website. That was part of his uh promotion to raise funds, and that these uh girls that we met there that we interviewed and we put on tape for our director, we're all had these different stories of being trafficked in some way, shape, or form. We went and talked to a former trafficker who we weren't allowed to ask certain questions of. He was very charismatic, and we did a lot of due diligence as much as we could on the organization, which was registered in the United States, and we had background checks and seemed like a really powerful story. We sent these directors there, and he also insisted usually when we do films in foreign countries, we have what's called a fixer, a local person who knows the territory and speaks the language, and is there to help and assist with the production and the relationships with the locals and any permitting or things that you need. But Mickey said, I'll be the fixer, don't worry, I got it all taken care of. So directors when they

Innocente: Short, Impact, Oscar

SPEAKER_08 24:12

first went did not have that. And they did all these interviews and things got strange. We kept getting reports back.

SPEAKER_06 24:19

That that really violates the first rule of documentary filmmaking. You find your own fixer, it's an independent person. You don't rely on, you know, certainly don't rely on your film subject to do that. So what ended up happening was that he was he was just he was hard to understand. We we were all sort of struggling with it. And each one of us thought, well, maybe it's me that's having the problem. But when Josie and Dave, who were who were the co-directors, uh and their team went to uh Thailand in September of that year, it was 2013, and we we'd been there in July of that year, and they started filming and um and they they finished the shoot, they they sent us all the footage, they said, Can you get this translated for us? And so we f we found translators who work not only in Thai but in Mian, and we we got them the translations and we get a call from Josie and she says, I don't know what's going on here, but he didn't ask any of the questions we asked him to ask. And still you would think with that in mind, we would all say, Hmm, something's really wrong with this guy. Long story short, they went to Thailand three times to do shoots. Um turned out that he had totally misrepresented the children. Their parents had not sold them. They he had gone to their village and had said, Look, I have this program, it's in a you know, in a much better city, the schools are good. Send your your your kids to your daughters to us and we'll take care of them. And they did so very trustingly. And um until we got there and until Josie on the second shoot said to Mickey, You cannot be my fixer anymore. And you know, and she found she brought in a Thai woman to to be the fixer, and immediately that woman saw real, real weird things happening to her.

SPEAKER_08 26:07

There was a very dramatic moment if you watch the film in which she's interviewing a mother for the second time with the real heart translator, and the mother's asked, Why did you you know your daughter works as a your older daughter works in town as a escort, and this one was going to be trafficked, and now she's here. Do you feel good about it? And she goes blank and she doesn't know, she's like, What? And she says, No, no, no, and then she looks over at Mickey and she stops talking, and you realize there's something really wrong. And from there on it took a dramatic turn. We found out Mickey was probably running guns, there were a lot of guns in his uh his compound. The directors were terrified, decided maybe we should shut the film down. We brought our board in. They decided in the end to support it and say maybe we can go forward with this. And the issue again was that the kids were getting an education, but he was raising a tremendous amount of money and buying cars and land off of it, and we knew the funders, so we basically were able to turn the film around, said to the director who didn't want to do it. So the only way we could tell this story now is if you have to be part of it and and tell the audience what's going on. And so she reluctantly agreed. We were able to bust up the ring, got their funder who was Australian and uh former military. He pulled the funding, he persecuted Mickey. The girls, he actually was amazing because we wanted to make sure the girls were taken care of. He guaranteed all of them their scholarships and their money so they were taken care of. We felt good about that. Uh Mickey was run out of town, and uh so there was, I think, a good ending, but it was it was really kind of terrifying, and then there was a coda to it that was even crazier.

SPEAKER_12 27:57

But it's I mean it's an interesting thing for a documentarian that has an idea of what their documentary is gonna be about, and how you have these high hopes that you're gonna tell a really good story, you're passionate about it, but then you realize somewhere along the line that there's corruption in the story. And to be forthright and not stick to shift the story is a fascinating.

SPEAKER_08 28:20

We thought we had put to bed the whole thing, and then Sue and I want to say, we gotta get out of town, take a little vacation. We're on our way there. We get a call in the car, the car phone, and we had just hired a new assistant at Chine. Two new assistants were in the office for a week, and we get a call, and they're like, Help me, Sue. We're in the bathroom. I'm like, What what do you mean? There's somebody at the door. I'm like, okay, it's your job to answer the door. No, no, no, it's it's the FBI. I was like, the what?

SPEAKER_06 28:49

Well, can I tell the background of that? So somehow our film got to the State Department at at one point, and um the woman who was our liaison there showed it once, twice, three times. She kept getting requests to show the film within the state.

SPEAKER_08 29:02

Well, because it turns out Mickey was an American citizen, so they had a stake in it.

SPEAKER_06 29:06

So they had a stake in it. So we get we get a call from the uh from the FBI, and they want they want access to our footage. They want to take a look at what you know what we've got, what they what they can learn about Mickey, and we said, sure, it's no problem. Just let us know when you want it, we'll send it over to your office. But instead, these two very macho guys, shoot uh suit jackets open so you can see their guns.

SPEAKER_08 29:32

Because the the assistants had come up in the elevator with them and seen their guns.

SPEAKER_06 29:36

The funny part of this story is that Albi is being very good, very deferential, and I am so pissed off that they've done this.

SPEAKER_08 29:44

I'm like, okay, go. Did you see their credentials? They go, Yes, does it look legitimate? Yes, okay. Open the door for the FBI, put them on the speakerphone. So they they come in and they, you know, uh, where's the footage? And uh and we said, Well, you were going to make an appointment. We're not there now, come back when we're there. And we'll talk to you, and I'm being trying to manage it. And Sue got her her real mom voice on, I'll tell you.

SPEAKER_06 30:06

Yeah, because I had this voice, it was my mother's voice, and every once in a while it comes out when I least expect it. It always scared the crap out of us when we were kids. And it works effectively on other people too, as it turns out. And this voice came out of me. I remember I was and I said, How dare you? I said it with a few expletives, probably.

SPEAKER_08 30:25

Oh do the exorcism.

SPEAKER_06 30:26

You know, how how dare you do this? You've embarrassed us in front of our everybody in our building. I was afraid we were gonna get kicked out of our our office because of this, you know, and we said we told you we would send it, and blah, blah, blah, blah.

SPEAKER_11 30:37

So Well, that does take us into Anuja. So I don't know uh how many people have seen Anuja, but it's on it's on Netflix, so you should go see it. It's a beautiful short film. Um and it's about uh two girls and it leaves your hand, which is why I really like it. But um made me give a little synopsis just about that.

SPEAKER_08 30:58

Sure. Well the film is about two uh first our first narrative sh it's a narrative shorts about two uh girls and uh India sisters who work in a factory, which is part of what actually is the fabric

The Wrong Light: Truth Unravels

SPEAKER_08 31:10

of their lives. They're homeless again. And one of them is uh a math genius and gets a chance to go to on a scholarship to a school, but it has implications for the family that are uh they face every day in India about substance and working versus going to school. It's about women and education and and they have two sisters, and one of them was homeless, not an actress either. She did a remarkable job, and uh it it it's it's really being used in advocacy quite effectively now.

SPEAKER_12 31:38

You had said that this film was brought to you already made. Can you explain how that works? That someone brings a completely finished film to you.

SPEAKER_06 31:47

It's the first and only time it's ever happened. Adam Grays is the the director, and his wife Suchitra Matai is this a very wonderful Indian artist who works in textiles. And I I don't know how he found out about Aaron Cobb, who was our director of Liana, but was another another really beautiful film that he'd made that was half documentary and half animation. But Aaron suggested that he come to us. And so the film was done. It was a chance to join this film without having to pay anything to do that, which is as I said the first and only time that's ever happened. Um and he came because he needed help with festival strategy. And they they were having mixed success in festivals, but they did win the LA Shorts Festival, and that qualified them for the Academy Award. And then Mindy Kaylin came in. God bless her, the the film was shortlisted, and she campaigns so dramatically for the film. I always feel like she's the reason we got nominated because of the I've watched that film twice.

SPEAKER_12 32:50

It is so good. It is so good. It's such a beautiful storytelling of how this sprite girl makes enough money, has to make enough money to go take the test, and how her sister helps her. It's really beautiful.

SPEAKER_08 33:03

And it's told from their point of view, and this is like a shine mantra. So there's a lot of films that use adults to tell these stories, but we want children and the kids to tell their stories as personally and intimately as they can. Because you know, they don't get a chance to speak. And these films give them the chance to speak directly, and that's really an important part of our filmmaking.

SPEAKER_12 33:26

So we want to talk about a short film that you have at the festival. Yes. So it is another expose, your second expose that you've done. Tell us about the business of trouble.

SPEAKER_06 33:37

This was intended to be an expose. The business of trouble was very interesting about this film. It's it's it's a it's very short, it's 34 minutes. Um and this film was brought to us by one of our board members. Um, and he he'd made a big donation for another cause, and he said to me, kind of off the cuff, he said, if you were ever to make a film about the troubled teen industry, I would give you half a million dollars. And I said, Wow, because actually we have been looking at that. We'd been doing research about stories primarily about programs in Utah and California, but we were very interested in the topic. And he did come aboard, he did give us most of the funding, we we raised the rest, and and we made this story that uh features four women, actually.

SPEAKER_11 34:28

Yeah, it's extraordinary, and it really we did a deep dive researching all the things after we saw that. Um, there's an amazing organization that is mentioned in this called unsilenced.org, which really does a fabulous job explaining a lot of um how private equity has become a huge part in owning these different places, which are therapeutic boarding schools, wilderness therapy programs, faith-based academies, and conversion therapy camps.

SPEAKER_06 35:00

Yeah, the key point of this film is the role played by private equity in these in these programs. And I and I was thinking about this earlier today. I would it occurs to me that I I would look at private equity as very similar to a virus entering a uh a living cell, in that it it depletes that cell of its nutrients, it copies its RNA and and the the cell is effectively destroyed. And that's what happens to so many programs that private equity invests in. They go in with uh remaining involved with an organization maybe five to seven years and they suck the life out of it. And so that's what happens in these programs. And in fact, the board member who gave us this money was motivated to do this because his own son had been in one of these programs. Over the months that he was there. Andrew said he kept hearing his son say, Well, I don't have this therapist anymore, and that program has ended, and and we used to do this, but we don't anymore. And Andrew, who was a very savvy real estate guy in New York and very, you know, very knowledgeable about finance, he said to himself, he said, This sounds like private equity, and he investigated it. And yes, indeed, that's what was happening. And so that was our purpose for making this film. There is no federal legislation that governs the activities of these centers. And Paris Hilton, as I'm sure many of you know, herself was remanded to one of these centers. She's become a fervent activist. She was speaking with members of Congress during the Biden administration. And our outreach goal for this film is, and it won't happen during this administration. I think we all know this, so we're just gonna have to bide our time. But but when sanity is restored, the goal is to to really push for federal legislation.

SPEAKER_08 36:53

Meanwhile, we're working on the state level, which is which is important because we can start in the states like Florida and Utah and places where these places are and get some regulation and also there's they get federal funding. So it's a double whammy. They get federal funding and they're unregulated. Talking to some taxpayer dollars. That's right. And it's really uh a tragedy, and these these kids need help, and we hope the film helps them.

SPEAKER_11 37:16

Yeah, I and I think it was really interesting that we discovered that New Jersey is actually a state that does regulate it does. And it has it does not have for-profit boarding, therapeutic boarding. It tries to do it has a twenty-four uh seven outreach. If you have are struggling and you need help right away, you can call a number, uh, then they will send a team to your house to help. And they try really to enforce and put Medcake dollars to helping with at-home help as well as community.

SPEAKER_08 37:50

A model that is being looked at for these other states. So go Jersey.

SPEAKER_12 37:55

So talking about young teens, we are going to be moving into our special guests coming up who are part of the resilience award winners this year.

SPEAKER_08 38:07

And love making films. We made almost now 23 films, but we can't make enough to talk about this topic in kids. So we thought we would start the Resilience Awards to support other filmmakers who are making films about resilience to help improve the lives of kids. We're now in seven different festivals where we give prizes for screenwriting, for filmmaking, for shorts, for docs, different categories. And one of these categories now is for emerging filmmakers in the Montclair Festival. And we really love these films and support them. We help their outreach, we give them a grant of some money, uh, we give them outreach support, festival support, uh, because these are the films, as we say, we wish we made and that other people made. So the resilience awards, we're really proud. These filmmakers here in in New Jersey are uh an amazing young talent, and the film they made is is powerful.

SPEAKER_12 38:59

It is. Before we bring up them, I also want to say that the award that was given out is in coordination with Montclair Film Festival with Sue Hollingberg as the educational director that alerted us of this film and told us that you know we should take a look at it. And so we did, and so they're here tonight. We're gonna probably do some musical chairs here in a minute, but before we're gonna show you the film. So their film is called, In Case You Forgot, it's a four-minute film created by Henry Slater and Jackson Provin, winners of the Shine Global 2025 Filmmaker Resilience Award. The film explores themes of memory, identity, self-reflection

Safety, Ethics, And FBI Knock

SPEAKER_12 39:40

through the lens of a young person writing a letter to their future selves. A quiet and powerful meditation, a resilience and emotional growth. So welcome to the next generation.

SPEAKER_04 39:52

Hello, guys.

SPEAKER_12 39:53

So are all of you seniors right now? We are you're all seniors. So you actually experience this event that you did a film on.

SPEAKER_03 40:02

Yeah, we're like in the process right now of applying to college and going going through all of that, yeah.

SPEAKER_12 40:07

So tell us, are you all in film classes or is this a hobby, or how do you how did you guys get into making films?

SPEAKER_04 40:14

I think we wish we had film classes at our school, but we don't. No, it's just like since we were little, we've all like us four have been making movies together. Really since we were like in elementary school, and we've always just loved it.

SPEAKER_12 40:25

Can you each tell us what part you played and what your roles were in it?

SPEAKER_03 40:31

For this one, yeah. Um I was a screenwriter and was the main main actor, and I edited it with Julian. We all we all had a lot of different parts though, like because it was really just the four of us. I think each one of us was integral in our own way.

SPEAKER_04 40:46

Um my name's Henry. I was the director and I pitched Jackson the original idea.

SPEAKER_02 40:51

Um I'm Sean, and I just wanted to help wherever I could. So if they needed me to do something like make fake tears, then fake tears.

SPEAKER_12 41:00

How did he make fake tears?

SPEAKER_04 41:02

We're just flicking.

SPEAKER_01 41:05

And uh I'm Julian. I also edited with Jackson, and then uh I'm sure you guys heard it, Music by Julian. That was uh music by Julian. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_12 41:14

I didn't wait till the very end, the first time I watched it, and then I was like, oh wait, at the very end, he says music by Julian, because I was like, who did the music? Because the second time I caught the music, and I loved the little simplicity of it.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

It was uh all done on a Walmart kids toy. I don't know. I don't know if I've actually ever said that. No, this was uh the or am I allowed to plug it? Or I'm not sponsored. I think it's oh please, okay. It's the um V Tech like kitty DJ star machine. It's like 50 bucks at Walmart. That thing has gotten me so far in life, you would not believe that. I'm so serious.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

That is awesome.

SPEAKER_04 41:48

He's definitely had $50 of fun. Julian was just like recording weird samples, and we were like, we should just leave that in the movie. So now every time we have to watch it in front of an audience, it's like we all just like awkward laugh because we're like, oh my god, I can't believe we did that.

SPEAKER_01 42:04

Every night. No, no, no. Yeah, come on.

SPEAKER_12 42:07

So, Henry, you said you pitched the idea. What brought up the idea? How did that come to you?

SPEAKER_04 42:12

Um, we had a uh there was another, what was the competition called?

SPEAKER_03 42:17

It was just like the New Jersey high school film competition.

SPEAKER_04 42:20

So we had to make a three-minute movie or something, and uh the I think the the prompt was like out of place. Yeah, that was it.

SPEAKER_03 42:28

It was just out of place.

SPEAKER_04 42:30

Uh I was thinking back uh at like the end of our junior year, I was like thinking about applying to college and just the the stress that comes with that and stuff. Uh we like I was just like, so what if we made a movie about, you know, a kid who applies to college, does not get into his dream school, and uh we we used to spin it near the end and r make make it clear that everything's gonna be okay despite that. And uh Jackson ran with it.

SPEAKER_03 43:00

Yeah. We wrote a script, we had to make the original competition that we made it for, we only had a couple days to do it. Like they released the prompt, and then we had like four days to submit it. So I wrote it in like one night because we came up or he came up with that the concept, and then I was just like, I had like no time to edit it, so it was basically just whatever whatever I came up with.

SPEAKER_01 43:20

Could I butt in for a second? Yeah, we had talked about this. We we held a writer's meeting, which was us just having our school lunch in like the the one green room we have.

SPEAKER_04 43:32

Um it's not it's not a green room, it's a room that is green. No, it's green. Literally bright green.

SPEAKER_01 43:42

But um, yeah, not to interrupt. But like it was so crazy how rushed all of this was. Yeah, Henry gave us the idea one like we we learned about the prompt, and Henry pitched the idea, and then in like one lunch lunch period, we figured out the plan for everything.

SPEAKER_00 43:58

Yeah, go back, yeah.

SPEAKER_11 43:59

No, that's awesome. Because you said you've been making films together for a while. Can you give us a a a little peek of what were some of your earlier projects?

SPEAKER_02 44:07

We started on the comedy.

SPEAKER_12 44:08

I I'm kind of not surprised. When you look back at this film, since you say it was rushed, uh, do you see changes you wish you would have made to it?

SPEAKER_04 44:19

I think. Well, first of all, we shot it all in one night. And edited we from what?

SPEAKER_03 44:24

Like

Narrative Short Anuja: Access And Advocacy

SPEAKER_03 44:25

three to We shot from four p.m. to one in the morning, and then we went back to my house and we set up everything and edited. Me and Julian edited the whole movie and did the score and everything from one in the morning to seven a.m. And then I left to go to like virtually, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:45

Like we were rushed.

SPEAKER_03 44:47

It was literally I hit like submit and then walked out the door. So um, so that version was pretty rushed. But then we after we spent another week like tweaking it, which is the one that you just saw. Um so we had we had some time to sort of shape it a little better.

SPEAKER_11 45:04

Do you want to pursue film going forward, or are you open-minded to whatever happens in college and study different things?

SPEAKER_01 45:12

We love making movies, we love making movies. For me, I've known that I've I've wanted I've wanted to do this since I was like seven. And uh no, Henry already said this, but like we grew up making these videos on YouTube, like like because it was just it was the only thing that like we loved. We would take our cameras or our phones and walk into the our like school creek every day, and we would like no plan, no nothing. We just did it because it was what we loved. And um I mean that that's a lot of how this movie came out. It was just we got the first opportunity to do something on the scale that we wanted to, so yeah, like film is at least for me, is everything. This is what I'm I'm gonna do.

SPEAKER_04 45:51

Yeah, much much like Julian. I've wanted to do film for such a crazy long time. Throughout high school, I've just gotten more and more obsessed with movies and just how they how they work. That's cool.

SPEAKER_03 46:03

For me, my my main passion is is music. Um, but doing these movies is like one of the greatest things ever. Um, and I definitely want to continue, whether that's film scoring or just being a part of the industry in some way. Um I'm I'm really passionate about it. So I would love to have it be some part of my career. Yeah. I think you guys are off to a really good start.

SPEAKER_11 46:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. So if anybody has any questions either for Albi or Susan or these amazing kids, we're gonna invite Albi and Susan back up to the stage and we're gonna step off.

SPEAKER_12 46:37

I thought I planted some people to ask some questions. Yes. I'm gonna walk up to my sister. What's your question?

SPEAKER_08 46:45

After that, we'd go to my brother.

SPEAKER_12 46:47

Okay. Every family member, stand up.

SPEAKER_10 46:50

Thank you so much. This was so fascinating. Um, my question is in terms of when you do find something that's incredibly shocking and you're it's a vulnerable situation. I mean, how do you find the strength to keep going and and not be afraid that you're in this strange place and something could happen to you, really, your safety?

SPEAKER_08 47:12

Well, it's a great question. I I think it's the passion for the mission. You know, we're there to tell these stories to improve children's lives. So nobody speaks for them. They're the most vulnerable population in the world, and nobody speaks for them. And Shine is really the only organization that's solely dedicated to telling only these stories about children. So that's what keeps us going. That mission in the midst of it is telling those stories.

SPEAKER_06 47:37

I will say that thinking again about the wrong light, by the end of that filming, we were scared. We were really scared for our crew.

SPEAKER_12 47:44

Sarah, I'd like to first point out Sarah is my dearest oldest friend from New York City, and she's a documentary filmmaker.

SPEAKER_07 47:51

Okay. Thank you, Jeanette. And I'm so proud of you. This was amazing. I love you. I I have a question for all of you. What's your all-time favorite film?

unknown 48:02

Oh goodness.

SPEAKER_08 48:04

I could start just because it hangs up and back of me in my office and inspires me. It's Lawrence of Arabia, which just blew me away to what filmmaking could be, transported me to a world I'd never seen. Music, sound, acting, story just was an epic feeling, and that's what really drove me into filmmaking and storytelling, really.

SPEAKER_03 48:26

I can go. I feel like for me it changes a lot, but I think right now I'd go with Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee. That movie, it's just the first time I saw it, I completely broke down. It's just so unbelievably powerful and continues to be so prescient and relevant in the world today, and I just think it's a a beautiful reflection on the human condition and society, and it's a gorgeous piece of art.

SPEAKER_04 48:53

I I got a lot. Um I think overall my favorite movie ever is Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa. I just love that movie. It's just so much fun. I also really like House, the Nobuhiko by Yashi. That movie's so weird.

SPEAKER_08 49:06

I love it. It's so good. Okay, we know what kind of films you're gonna

New Exposé: Troubled Teen Industry

SPEAKER_08 49:10

be making.

SPEAKER_02 49:10

Uh Charles Peston, so good. Uh, just something about the aliens be on the movie has, and soundtrack is so creepy and weird. Just love all the makeup and the performances are so good, and the ending line. Yeah, very good.

SPEAKER_01 49:28

Excellent. Good catch. There will never be a better movie than where the wild things are. And I will die on that hill. Very comp. Yeah, rest in peace, bro. We love Jersey.

SPEAKER_07 49:42

Yes, love Jersey.

SPEAKER_06 49:44

Susan. You know, maybe West Side Story. I don't know.

SPEAKER_12 49:48

These are all good movies, huh? Do you have any obsessions?

SPEAKER_05 49:52

Um, all right, this one's for Alvi and Susan. Which of your films do you think had the biggest impact, either in terms of like awareness of an issue or in terms of driving like policy at the federal level?

SPEAKER_06 50:03

I think probably The Harvest. And that was not one of our most successful films, not one of the our very best films either, I don't think. But but we did take that film to Congress. Uh, we did we brought it there in support of um changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act, uh, because child farm workers were not protected in the way that children working in any other area uh were. And that's still the film that is most requested for use in the classroom across the country. And it was the film that when we created the curriculum, teachers from all over the country helped us to write that curriculum.

SPEAKER_08 50:44

I would say one of the ones that had a really direct impact is one of our little known films called One Way Up was made in England, London about a BMX track that stands in the middle of a gang territory. We shot it in 3D, I don't know why. But it's wonderful BMX footage. These kids are inspired by a DJ who took over this club and gave them access where they didn't have it. They turned out a world champion. And as a result of the film, the community built them a new track and brought these gangs together to race together. So from an immediate impact, that that film is really stands out. BMX.

SPEAKER_06 51:29

The BMX event, and I think he came in third.

SPEAKER_09 51:33

Hi, I have a question uh for the emerging filmmakers. Congratulations, by the way. Thank you. My question is do you guys go to the movies or do you watch movies on your phone or electronic devices?

SPEAKER_12 51:46

Full disclosure, she is a board member of the Montclair Film Festival and wants people to come to the theater.

SPEAKER_04 51:52

Okay. Before anything else, I'll have you know I am a member of Montclair Film. I much prefer going to the movies for anything. Um, it doesn't matter what theater it is, of course, Montclair Film is the best.

SPEAKER_12 52:07

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 52:08

Of course. But um, I always prefer going to the movies, but some movies, you know, they just don't get screened. And like there's plenty of movies that I need to watch, like on the internet archive, because there's just no other way to watch them.

SPEAKER_08 52:20

Maybe you could suggest them for the Bellevue now that's opened and you'll get a classic series going. That's a good idea.

SPEAKER_03 52:26

Yeah, no, I completely agree. It's I think the theater is the best experience if you can, but like you're saying, there's so many movies that just if you're watching older movies or just more obscure things, there's no other way to watch them but at home.

SPEAKER_01 52:39

The way I think about it is like if I'm not on an airplane, I'm not watching a movie on my phone. I like to I like to live by that, I think. The big screen, the big screen, come on.

SPEAKER_12 52:50

All right, you guys, thank you so much. We're waiting. Really appreciate everyone coming to thank you to Monclaw Film Festival for having us, and thank you to Susan and Alvi and all the emerging filmmakers, and thank you so much. And can we get a picture of everyone? Yeah, let's see. Let's do what we got this.

SPEAKER_11 53:14

This podcast was produced by Rachel Martens and Jeanette Afsharian. You can find us on Spotify, iTunes, and Buzz Sprout. Thanks for listening. See you next week.