Experiencing Interruptions?

BLESSED: LIVE. LAUGH. RUN.

When Ashley, a poor religious college student, takes a weekend nanny job in rural Indiana, she’s kidnapped and imprisoned by a sinister family forcing young women to bear children. Meanwhile, Nomi, a survivor of assault seeking a clandestine abortion, unknowingly steps into the same family’s trap — and it falls to Nomi’s best friend Maura to uncover the horrifying truth and fight to save them both.

  • Katie Madonna Lee
    Director
    Irish Catholic, Execution of Julie Ann Mabry, Blonde Starlet Acid Trip
  • Katie Madonna Lee
    Writer
  • Katie Madonna Lee
    Producer
  • Chloe Tarkovsky
    Key Cast
    "Beca"
  • Ann Myrna
    Key Cast
    "MOM"
  • Brett Griffey
    Key Cast
    "DADDY"
  • Julia Nurenberg
    Key Cast
    "Nomi"
  • Katie Madonna Lee
    Key Cast
    "Maura"
  • Katerina Burke
    Key Cast
    "Ashley "
  • Project Type:
    Feature
  • Genres:
    Horror, Thriller
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 3 minutes 24 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 28, 2025
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Katie Madonna Lee

Katie Madonna Lee, also known as A Great Male Artist, is a confrontational and satirical filmmaker, who writes, directs, produces, shoots and composes the film scores to her films.

She won the New York Women in Film & Television Award for "The Execution of Julie Ann Mabry" and had her webseries "Flabulous" banned by Youtube. "Irish Catholic" her second feature film won Best of The Fest at South Texas Undergound Film Festival.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Blessed: Live, Laugh, Run! is a feature-length horror film rooted in the deeply personal and deeply political. It explores a fictional forced birth camp orchestrated by pro-life extremists—but the horror at its core is real, drawn from my own upbringing in a Rust Belt Catholic city where the politics of abortion shaped everything, often violently.

I was raised in a culture where I learned what abortion was before I knew what sex was—where children were marched into ideological battles they couldn’t understand. At twelve, I was forced to walk in a March for Life parade. At thirteen, I comforted my best friend as she traveled out of state for an abortion after surviving sexual assault. I’ve watched people preach about the sanctity of life while abusing or neglecting their own children. These contradictions—this moral theater—are what I confront in this film.

South Bend, Indiana, is the emotional and atmospheric foundation of Blessed. It’s a city full of contradiction: devout, decaying, and determined to keep its secrets. I use horror to capture the surrealism of being raised in that environment, where love was conditional and violence was righteous if it served the “right cause.” But this film doesn’t fall neatly on one side of the political spectrum. It also critiques the pro-choice movement’s failures—how institutional activism can ignore or alienate those who have experienced trauma from abortion. My goal was not to preach, but to portray complexity with clarity and humanity.

Stylistically, I lean into genre and satire to underscore the absurdity and brutality of a system that traps women in performative morality. Horror gives us space to confront the unspeakable. I use it here to evoke the paranoia, repression, and dissonance of aborition in a community where nothing is safe—even the people who claim to save you.
Blessed: Live, Laugh, Run! is a reclamation of voice. It’s a film for those who’ve been silenced, gaslit, and left behind. It’s my way of making sense of a world I didn’t choose—but that shaped me all the same.