Private Project

atoms of ashes

A young woman weaves through the stages of grief after a miscarriage, confronting the vast universe inside her own body and beyond. Where do we begin and end if we are already made of stardust?

  • Maggie Scrantom
    Director
  • Maggie Scrantom with Hilary Williams and June Thiele
    Writer
  • Maggie Scrantom with Hilary Williams and June Thiele, In Association with p3 Mediaworks
    Producer
  • Siobhan Reddy-Best, Kroydell Galima, Kara Grace Watkins
    Key Cast
  • Candice Majors
    Director of Photography
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    Sci-fi, Drama, Short, Ambient, Experimental
  • Runtime:
    6 minutes 50 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    July 31, 2017
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Windy City International Film Festival
    Chicago
    United States
    July 13, 2018
    Best Director
  • Sound Of Silence
    Chicago
    United States
    April 14, 2018
  • Women of the Now Anniversary Showcase
    Chicago
    United States
    April 25, 2018
    Judges Choice Award
  • MiddleCoast Film Festival
    Chicago
    United States
    September 23, 2018
  • Midwest Film Festival Femme Filmmakers
    Chicago
    United States
    August 7, 2018
Director Biography - Maggie Scrantom

Maggie is a Chicago based actress, social justice educator, and self-taught filmmaker. She grew up in various parts of Georgia and Tennessee with a brief stint in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Since moving to Chicago, she's had the privilege to act with great theatre artists throughout the city which eventually connected her to the filmmaking community where she primarily worked in production design. Over the last few year, she curated her own projects honing her skills and aesthetic. In her work, Maggie aims to normalize womanhood and queerness while exploring the human condition through a sci-fi lens.

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Director Statement

"Atoms of Ashes is a surprisingly confident, masterfully-made dramatic short, especially considering that Scrantom, an actress who has appeared on Chicago Med and Chicago P.D., has no directing credits yet listed on IMDB. Written in collaboration with Hilary Williams and June Thiele, Scrantom's film offers a poetic examination of one woman’s grief in the wake of a miscarriage. Beginning with a shot of an ultrasound and continuing with scenes of a would-be mother (Siobhan Reddy-Best) imagining a future of quality time spent with a daughter who will never be born (Kara Grace Williams), this emotionally affecting, sci-fi-tinged mood piece combines powerful but wordless performances with an evocative score, quotes from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (which appear onscreen as hand-written text) and startling visual effects involving the solar system, to conjure, like Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life in miniature, a sense of the cosmic and the eternal. The result is an exhilarating journey through cycles of love, loss and rebirth that seems to encapsulate the entire universe in just seven minutes." TimeOut Chicago