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The Things I Leave Behind

Needing to escape a WILDFIRE raging towards her home - young HAILEY must decide what she will take with her...and what to LEAVE BEHIND.

  • Julie Schuldt
    Director
  • Julia Byers
    Writer
  • Shreya Sanjay Jha
    Producer
  • James Francis Ginty
    Producer
  • Eliya Or
    Key Cast
    "Hailey"
  • Tegan Ashton Cohan
    Key Cast
    "Diane"
  • Deborah Geffner
    Key Cast
    "Grandma Lucy"
  • Project Type:
    Short, Student
  • Runtime:
    13 minutes 34 seconds
  • 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:
    Yes - University of Southern California
Director Biography - Julie Schuldt

Julie Schuldt is an American filmmaker from Santa Rosa, California. Raised Unschooled, Julie grew-up in an environment that fostered imagination, freedom of expression, critical thinking, and fearlessness. Driven to tell cinematic stories from her earliest memories, Julie completed her first feature length film – Insensate (2012) – at the age of 15. Her second feature film – Sometimes I Dream of Wandering (2022) – got her accepted into the USC School of Cinematic Arts. At USC, Julie has directed several short films with her unique brand of concise storytelling, captivating theatrical elements, and profoundly poetic themes, including her semi-autobiographical Capstone Project about a girl and her mother trying to escape a raging wildfire – The Things I Leave Behind (2025).

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Director Statement

On the night of October 9th, 2017, my mother narrowly escaped a devastating wildfire that consumed our home and reduced everything we had to ashes. I am still haunted by the tremor in my mother’s voice as she told me over the phone, “Our home is gone. Everything is gone.” And so my mother tells her story: winds hitting the house like battering rams, the night sky a wall of orange smoke, and the singular knowing that she must leave. When I was selected by USC for the honor of directing this film - The Things I Leave Behind - my mother and I cried in awe on the phone, beholding life’s strange way of weaving itself together. The film is about a young girl named HAILEY, facing a great “Before & After” – those moments so sharp they cut your life in two. I’ve experienced a few— the 2017 Northern California Tubbs Fires that erased all evidence of my childhood, and the recent loss of my most beloved friend to suicide in 2024. These are the griefs so powerful you look back at yourself in the span of a day and find your heart unrecognizable. Making this film was - and continues to be - an unspeakable gift in my life. All along the way, there was a certain sense of magic. I watched as a kismet team rallied together — all full of passion, tenacious hard-work, and open-hearted bravery – entwining their own experiences of Loss & Grief into the fabric of the film (even woven into the original Quilt that appears in the film). I see their handprints on every frame. The Things I Leave Behind reached within me and bridged a gap between the child I once was, and the adult I became through the fires of my life. This film is what my heart felt like when it stood alone in the place where love once was, and somehow decided to keep beating. I forever thank my collaborators, my beloved friend Rae, and my mom — our time spent together endures, while all the rest will be left behind.