A Mentee Alum Seeks Funding For Her First Feature Film
July 20, 2023
Our mentee alumni are taking their storytelling skills to the next level with projects that range from debut novels to TV pilots, web comics to studio albums. Recently, mentee alum Shea Formanes reached out to tell us about an exciting new venture in filmmaking and how the Girls Write Now community can support her:
Hi everyone, I hope you’re all having a wonderful summer! My name is Shea Formanes, and I’m a Filipino-American writer/filmmaker currently based in Seattle. I was also a Girls Write Now mentee from 2018-2019, and this program genuinely changed my life in so many ways. Now, I recently graduated college, and I’m currently crowdfunding for my first indie feature film (which I’m writing and directing), called I Watched Her Grow.
A sci-fi drama, the film is about an aspiring botanist who embarks on a harrowing journey to reckon with her childhood, and her mother’s death, after taking in an enigmatic teenager that she meets by chance on the side of the road. It’s essentially a mix of Carrie, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Real Women Have Curves that centers the complex relationships between four women of color, as well as their stories of grief, loss, and generational trauma through the metaphor of growing plants (with a fantastical twist).
We’re currently crowdfunding to finance the film, and we have until August 20th to reach our goal – I’ll link the campaign here! If you’re able to, please share it and spread the word – any assistance would be greatly appreciated! We not only want this unique world to feel as real as possible, but we also want to ensure that our wonderful cast and crew are paid for their hard work!