Private Project

The Country They Call Life

A spirit trapped in a forest must choose between life and death, with only the help of a suicidal man.

  • H. R. Kean
    Director
    Best Friend Zone, Impossibilities, Piano Lessons
  • Cara Mitsuko
    Key Cast
    "Autumn"
    Man in the High Castle, Better Call Saul, Westworld, You
  • Jeremy Roberts
    Key Cast
    "Daniel"
    Babylon, Chance
  • H.R. Kean
    Writer
  • H.R. Kean
    Producer
    Piano Lessons, Best Friend Zone, Disobedience
  • Cara Mitsuko
    Producer
    Look Up, Best Friend Zone, Age Appropriate
  • Allie Rivera-Quiñonez
    Producer
    Gigi & Nate, Spare Room
  • Project Type:
    Feature
  • Genres:
    Supernatural, Drama, Adventure
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 35 minutes
  • Production Budget:
    19,500 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States, United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States, United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Phoenix Film Festival
    Phoenix, AZ
    United States
    April 4, 2025
    Arizona Premiere
Director Biography - H. R. Kean

H.R. Kean is a writer-director originally from Central California. She holds a degree in Dramatic Arts with Honors from UC Santa Barbara, studied at the acclaimed Stuart Rogers Studio in Los Angeles, and co-founded two production collectives: TheFilmKind and SheMakesFilm. Through these companies, she’s produced twelve short films, dance pieces, and short-form documentaries over eight years—projects that have screened at festivals, won audience awards, and been licensed by colleges across the U.S.

Born into a family of artists—her parents were choir conductors and opera directors—H.R. grew up in theaters, backstage, and rehearsal halls. She began performing at age three but ultimately found her voice in directing, committing to it full-time at 28.

Now, after years of honing her craft, she is directing her first feature film: The Country They Call Life, a poetic and emotionally charged fable starring The Man in the High Castle’s Cara Mitsuko and Babylon’s Jeremy Roberts. The film continues her exploration of deeply human stories—rooted in beauty, honesty, and the complicated ways we learn to live again.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Autumn came to me in a forest.
She stood still and wouldn’t move.

I had just emerged from two years of illness—years that shattered the life I thought I was building. I had imagined momentum, purpose, flight. Instead, I found stillness. Grief. A strange kind of limbo. And as I started to heal, she arrived: this girl in the woods. But she didn’t speak. She didn’t leave. She just waited.

My name is Hannah Kean, and I make films that live in the liminal—between beauty and brutality, romance and reality, stillness and change. I create stories for women, but not only for women—stories that make space for what’s quiet, unspoken, often overlooked. That may sound delicate. It’s not. In an industry that prizes speed, scale, and spectacle, choosing emotional truth is an act of defiance.

The Country They Call Life is a fable—but one rooted in a real question:
What does it mean to choose life, even after everything breaks?

This is not a story about grief as an idea. It’s about what happens in the aftermath.
After the funeral.
After the casseroles stop arriving.
After people stop asking if you’re okay.

It’s about the strange landscapes we find ourselves in when loss has changed us—and the quiet, unlikely moments that call us back. Back to our bodies. Back to the world. Back to each other.

I want to ask:

Where do we go when our pain no longer has a name?

What if the place we land is as beautiful as it is haunted?

Who are the people who meet us there?

And how do we begin to return—not to what life was, but to what it still can be?

This story may look like a fairytale. But to me, it feels like truth.

Thank you for stepping into it with me.

Warmly,
Hannah