Proxy

Proxy is the story of Devon, a surrogate for a couple with fertility issues who decide they no longer want the child she is carrying for them when the child is found to have an abnormality. Devon retreats to the home of her sister, Andie, her partner Lisa and their two children to wrestle with the weight of a decision she never thought she would have to make. Proxy explores fertility, pregnancy and motherhood through the lens of these three different women and their unique experiences.

  • DeWanda Wise
    Key Cast
    "Lisa"
    Jurassic World Dominion, Star of Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It, Fatherhood, Someone Great
  • Jenny Strassburg
    Key Cast
    "Andie"
    The Equalizer, FBI: Most Wanted, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
  • Lauren Hines
    Key Cast
    "Devon"
    Ash, Where You Go, Wedding Season
  • Bob Jaffe
    Key Cast
    FBI, Sweetbitter, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
  • Sawandi Wilson
    Key Cast
    Bull, The Get Down, The House of Flowers, Isn't it Romantic
  • Christopher Woodley
    Key Cast
    Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Iron Mike
  • Kaz PS
    Director
    Academy Award Qualifying Film Ash, Megafauna, Jolly Friends Forever More,
  • Lauren Hines
    Producer
    Academy Award Qualifying film Ash, Where You Go, Wedding Season, Blank Canvas
  • Lauren Sowa
    Producer
    Marisol (HBO), Paris is in Harlem, Depart, Stray
  • Sara Kinney
    Cinematographer
    The World According to Jeff Goldblum, Lady Liberty (Tribeca), Out of My Comfort Zone, Vice
  • Brian Leahy
    Writer
    Made Public, Mia, Waffles, The Noise in Your Head
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    14 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    February 16, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    18,000 USD
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Distribution Information
  • Network Ireland Television
    Distributor
    Country: Worldwide
Director Biography - Kaz PS

Kaz is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and video artist.

She has made six short films which have screened at festivals domestically and abroad, directed ten music videos, including Silversound Showdown PRIX ULTIME Winner “Gold,” and been the grateful recipient of fellowships and grants from the likes of AFI, Cinereach, Eastman Kodak and the Jerome Foundation. She is an alumna of AFI’s prestigious Directing Workshop for Women and won the Institute’s Jean Picker Firstenberg Award for her 2010 DWW short, MEGAFAUNA, which starred Marin Ireland (GLASS CHIN) and was shot by Reed Morano, ASC (HANDMAID’S TALE). Her 2017 short, ASH, starred Jason Butler Harner (OZARK) and Dale Soules (ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK). Her 2020 experimental acid western THE HALCYON features an original score by musicians Greg Loman and Harry Waters. It was picked up by short genre platform DUST, premiered on October 8, 2020 and is approaching 100k views. Kaz is currently prepping her first feature with Academy Nicholl's Award-winning script SECRET BOY, a surreal psychological thriller about the perils of running from grief.

As a video artist she has presented work in France (Théâtre de Chaillot, Paris; Les Subsistances, Lyon; Le Quartz, Brest), Poland, Denmark, Russia, Australia, the UAE, and across the US (American Repertory Theater, Cambridge MA; Bumbershoot, Seattle, WA) and was the video artist in residence with internationally acclaimed NYC-based dance theater company Witness Relocation for over a decade. Her video design work has been called “hallucinatory” by the New York Times, and described as “audio-visual anarchy” by New York Magazine.

Kaz graduated Cum Laude from Princeton University with a BA in English and a Certificate in Creative Writing. She was born in England, grew up in the Pacific Northwest, spent many strange years in Brooklyn, NY and now calls Los Angeles home.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

I've always thought there was a liminal space between receiving bad news and actually absorbing it, an uncanny emotional twilight where your mind clings to the safety-- the sanity-- of the "before," and shies away from the discomfort, even the terror of the "now."

I can't imagine an instance where this effect would be more pronounced than in receiving dire news about a fetus that you're carrying as a surrogate for another couple. There must be, for a surrogate mother, a healthy and necessary degree of dissociation that goes into your feelings for the life you're carrying. It's yours and also not. Of your body but destined for distance. You're a custodian, not a parent. How do you shift your lens on that studied separation? What do you do with your dissociation when it suddenly needs to transform into compassion?

My approach to PROXY was to paint a portrait of this surrogate mother's journey across that liminal space, starting in a soft, almost shock-addled form of denial which she's wrenched out of by the harsh, startling admonitions of her family, finally forcing her to contend with the gravity and sadness, but also hope and possibility, of her circumstances. It's a rumination on acceptance, the kaleidoscopic nature of grief, and ultimately the power of a mother's love.