Love & Lazarite

I wrote Love & Lazarite after my mom, Kathi, died of cancer in August 2023, because the idea of bringing the dead back to life was comforting to me. She was first diagnosed when I was fifteen years old, and went on to live with stage four lung cancer for ten years. My sheer desperation to find some sort of control over her random, fatal diagnosis has shaped my storytelling since I was a freshman in high school. So, I’m making this film in part to help process my grief. While Love & Lazarite will be my first film that she will never see, my soul walks beside her through every step of the way.

Love & Lazarite is a direct response to the disconnection and empathy crisis we face in our modern world. Tying this back to my inspiration, my mom's radical, unconditional empathy is perhaps the strongest legacy she leaves behind. Kathi always took time to engineer happiness throughout her life, and constantly ideated on how to make strangers smile. For example, when I was little, she would string together beads around a seashell, in which she wrote “You Are Loved.” She would craft these little talismans and hand them out to folks at drive-through windows, grocery clerks, and postal workers. She didn’t expect anything out of it, she just wanted to spread genuine love. This sweetness is so rare, and I strive to cultivate this level of human kindness with Love & Lazarite—through the story, and on the set.

This short serves as proof of concept for a full-length feature film.