A vividly illustrated trek through the psyche of a young girl caught between reality and the consequences of her own troubled imagination. Through a series of violent, bestial encounters and startling visions involving a mysterious mountain where a trio of Kaiju are imprisoned within a spectral city, our main character bears witness to the destruction of Campbellian notions of destiny. In the end, she finds peace and understanding amidst an onslaught of chaos and uncertainty. Themes of fear, guilt, grief and beauty are illuminated by this unique distillation of vibrant drawings and swirling, cryptic music.

Currently in production.

Robbie C. Ward is an illustrator, animator, composer, and author from Colorado. His hand drawn animations have been screened at film festivals around the world, the most recent of which, ANNIHILATION, received the Award for Best Animated Film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Robbie is inspired by everything from monster movies and classic cartoons to Beethoven and Kurosawa, with a special passion for the work of William Blake and Maurice Sendak. He can usually be found happily at work in his studio with his trusty cat Boba.

In the 1980s, six rural communities across the nation’s interior were studied in detail by the Department of Energy to determine the feasibility of geologic nuclear waste disposal in their vicinity. This process was met with almost unanimous distress and resistance, leaving an enduring emotional and psychological imprint. In the end, only one site was chosen: a desert ridge in Nevada called Yucca Mountain, on the unceded lands of the Western Shoshone Nation. The radioactive material buried there would require isolation from human contact for countless generations - 10,000 years at a minimum. But the project was never completed, and still no durable solution exists for dealing with the most dangerous material ever created.

TO USE A MOUNTAIN visits each candidate site in present day vignettes, with immersive character-driven stories that place us directly in the landscapes and the lived experiences of those who inhabit them. With each new site and cast of characters, the crisis of nuclear waste grows more confounding, calling into question our relationship to history, technology, and the mythologies of the American landscape.

Currently in production.

Casey Carter is a filmmaker and interdisciplinary designer whose work engages nonfiction storytelling in film, photography, data visualization, and cartography. Working through a mixture of portraiture, real and imagined spaces and landscapes, and evidentiary documents and media, his work centers on themes of governmentality, geography, environmentalism and the personal dimensions of our technopolitical age. He is a 2021 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Film/Video.

Colleen Cassingham is a Brooklyn-based documentary filmmaker and the Development Manager at Multitude Films, an LGBTQ and women-led production company which produced films by and about underrepresented voices. She was a 2017-2018 UnionDocs Collaborative Studio fellow, a 2019 Points North Fellow, and a 2019 Sundance DFP grantee. The short documentaries she has co-directed have been published by The Atlantic and Brick House Cooperative, and broadcast on POV.

SUCKER tells the story of two Chinese-American brothers as they navigate their day in their hometown of Flushing ‘Chinatown’ in Queens, New York. After Andy loses his job at a local restaurant, he must find a way to take care of his little brother, Tom Tom. Andy is confronted with the realities of being a caretaker, and must decide if his personal fantasies and hopes for what he believes is his ideal future are worth sacrificing to provide a better, more grounded life for his little brother. Set against the eerie backdrop of a hyperreal offshoot of a Chinese-American neighborhood — one that has been abandoned, forgotten, manipulated and destroyed in its time of need — together, Andy and Tom Tom are the embodiment of the cultural dysphoria found there today.

Deni Cheng is a filmmaker from New York City. Her debut short film titled BUCKO! premiered at Nitehawk Theater presented by NoBudge. Her short film Paradise won Best Narrative Short at Indie Memphis Film Festival 2020. Her music videos have been covered by publications such as Rolling Stone and Billboard. Along with her music videos and narrative films, her fashion production and casting work has been featured in i-D Magazine, Dazed, V Magazine and more. She is proud to have been awarded the Flies Collective 2021 grant for her upcoming short film, Sucker, about two brothers from Flushing, Queens.