Set in the visually stunning McCall, Idaho, a holiday weekend is seen through the eyes of ten year old Joey and hosted by her mother and stepfather, Wendy (AMY SMART) and Ellis Conifer, a couple whose marital troubles are reaching their apex. Ellis is a trust fund baby, who is devoted to Wendy and Joey, but oblivious to the fact that his wife feels disconnected from him; Wendy, a former college radical, feigns a happiness she has secretly lost. Among the Conifer’s guests, are: Saul, the former husband of Wendy, a wanna-be intellectual and successful writer, whom we come to discover has never written a thing in his life; Will, the alcoholic ghost writer who is suffering from writer’s block; Emma, Saul’s wife and gallery owner, who is having an affair with Will. And Hal, the rootless hippie-life-coach and Wendy’s best friend. Into this combustible mix walks Chad, a nature photographer who is constantly putting himself in harms way through his childlike innocence and his clumsily placed camera
Director’s statement - AMONG RAVENS (Russell Friedenberg and Randy Redroad)
Can Nature Protect the Innocent?
AMONG RAVENS is inspired by real events… when the friends-and-family tradition of an annual summer gathering at a lake house in Idaho turned into an awakening for the Directors. There, we witnessed dark secrets of close friends unraveling in a rather disturbing manner, and were shocked to see the behavior of grown, allegedly civilized, adults towards a likely harmless outsider.
Moreover, we wondered about the impact on the youngest member of the group, a 9-year old girl, the writer’s daughter, and the effect our behavior was having on her. We were forced to ask ourselves how we, as adults, are seen in the eyes of the innocents and whether nature can truly protect them.
Exploring themes of truth, friendship and betrayal, AMONG RAVENS examines the sense of entitlement and ennui that is the pastime of the privileged and the emotional playground of the bored. Through a darkly comedic lens and the innocent eyes of a child, the film looks at a group of moneyed elites and the fortress of opulence that has become their prison.
When the story begins, Wendy Conifer is for the first time in her life asserting herself; trying to break the bonds of a loveless relationship. Wendy wants so badly to be a connected parent to her 9-year old daughter Joey, but she is incapable of it. She is a modern adult and faced with many questions that parents today can relate to as her identity as a mother, and as a wife are torn from her. Every single thing she defines herself as is not real anymore. In the midst of this crisis comes the enigmatic character of Chad, a strange and beautiful nature photographer, who wanders into their lives over a single weekend. In Chad, these bored and dissatisfied souls find a mirror to their darkest selves and an avatar on which to project their own fears and shortcomings. As their fears manifest, often cruelly, the cracks in their elegant armor begin to show, as each is gradually exposed by the childlike purity that seems to envelope Chad. All of this is seen through Joey’s eyes. As our witness and narrator, she attempts to understand the cruelties of life as her innocence slips away.
By our story’s end, each of these character’s lives have been touched, if not irrevocably altered, by this messianic stranger, who may or may not be as innocent as they’ve imagined.
The themes of AMONG RAVENS reflect the disconnection and discord in our families today. Families are losing their connective tissue, and when families aren’t whole, whether it is due to depression, disconnection or addiction, there is always the challenge that a more loving or dark entity will step in to provide the emotional support that we aren’t able to. At its heart, AMONG RAVENS is about the meaning of family and the moral compromises each character makes on their journey to find one.