
Recognition
- Austin Short Film Festival – Winner Best Relationship Drama Screenplay
- Austin After Dark Film Festival – Winner Best Drama Screenplay
- Golden Lion International Film Festival – Winner Best Short Script
- Top Indie Film Awards – Best Short Script
- NYC International Screenplay Awards – Finalist
- Hollywood International Cineverse Screenplay Awards – Finalist
- Dubai International Cineverse Screenplay Awards – Finalist
- The Women’s Independent Film & Television Festival – Finalist
- Milwaukee Independent Film Awards – Award Nominee
- Red Flights Pictures Screenplay Awards – Semi-finalist
- Los Angeles International Screenplay Awards – Semi-finalist
- Austin Film Festival Playwriting Competition – Second Rounder
- Atlanta Film Festival – Official Selection
- Phoenixville Film Festival – Official Selection
- Himachal Short Film Festival – Official Selection















Ambient Light
22 page historical drama
In the 1880s, a rural Texas mother struggles with her husband to get what may be their only chance at a family photograph with their two children.
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Ambient Light is a short film screenplay set in the 1880s, about a poor, rural Texas mother and her husband who are facing their final chance at a family photograph with their two children. But it’s about so much more than that.
About nine years ago, I stumbled upon the numerous post-mortem photographs from the 1800s, some even propped up, seated among family and made to look lifelike.
When I showed friends, many reacted with disgust and it was then that I felt compelled to show them exactly why these people would’ve done something so odd today. I wanted to make people understand the desperation they must have felt just trying to capture whatever lasting memory they could before death stole their loved one away forever. In a time when countless people had little or no access to photography, a post-mortem photo may likely be the only image of that person, ever. I decided to write a screenplay.
Since then, I’ve realized that I’ve always been drawn to stories of loss, and how people experience and cope with grief in different ways. It’s natural since I myself was no stranger to the tragedies of life, which struck again in 2015, over a year after writing Ambient Light.
After nearly nine glorious months of intense hope, utter joy and constant preparation, my first pregnancy resulted in a full-term stillborn. Not only did I spend three days in the hospital, mostly side-by-side with my new baby boy, but we also had a 3-hour house visitation and then placed our tiny dead newborn in the cremator ourselves.
Our experience was intimate, tender and much less removed than death often is in today’s veiled society. Ambient Light aims to question the distance we all now take for granted when experiencing nearby death.
After that, I became connected with the child loss communities and realized how much silent suffering is happening that no one talks about. Only 1 in 4 wanted pregnancies ends up in a live baby and many more people than we realize are experiencing this agony in isolation.
That is when I knew I absolutely must finish this screenplay and why I now must make this movie.
I hope that my film Ambient Light may shed light on child loss and encourage more open discussion around the topic. Someone around you is grieving the loss of a child and needs your support.
This film is slated for production in late 2025. A crowdfunding campaign will be announced in early 2025. Follow our progress and support this film by joining our mailing list.