Dry Heave
New York City, New York | Film Short
Comedy, Drama
Twenty-year-old Sabean walks in on her father sleeping with her roommate, leading her to commit him to a treatment center where a head nurse teaches middle-aged men to be attracted to women their own age.
Dry Heave
New York City, New York | Film Short
Comedy, Drama
1 Campaigns | New York, United States
22 supporters | followers
Enter the amount you would like to pledge
$1,977
Goal: $10,000 for production
Twenty-year-old Sabean walks in on her father sleeping with her roommate, leading her to commit him to a treatment center where a head nurse teaches middle-aged men to be attracted to women their own age.
About The Project
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
You can learn more about our crew so far on the Team page of this campaign.
Sabean walks in on her father, Jason, having sex with her twenty year old roommate which sets off a chain of events that irrevocably changes both of their lives. Sabean forces and commits her father to a treatment center in upstate NY, where they both spend 3 nights together. Focusing on teaching middle aged men to be attracted to women their own age, the treatment is led by a determined head nurse named Chrissy who tells the men that they’re infected by a “sickness” that will spread to their daughters if they don’t kill their sexual fantasies. The sickness will make their daughters slowly turn into their fathers, leading them to have the same sexual perversions. During the treatment, Jason and Sabean meet a father daughter pair named Mark and Laura, that tests their relationship.
SABEAN - 20, LEAD
Sabean is guarded, exhausted, and emotionally far older than she should be. Sharp-witted and observant, she has spent most of her life parenting her father. She craves normalcy and stability, but feels trapped inside a relationship dynamic she cannot escape. At the treatment center, Sabean clings to the hope that her father might finally change. Beneath her restraint is a growing frustration, grief, and desperation. She carries herself like someone stretched far beyond her limits, slowly realizing that the future she wants may never arrive.
JASON - 50s, LEAD
Jason is charming, funny, and deeply immature; a man still clinging to the illusion of youth. Stylish and confident on the surface, he masks his aging with forced charisma and a refusal to grow up. Cynical, argumentative, and incapable of admitting fault, he finds humor in almost everything.
Around his 20-year-old daughter, Sabean, he regresses even further, slipping into a dynamic that feels more like siblings than parent and child. He romanticizes their unconventional closeness and avoids confronting the consequences of his behavior. Beneath his absurdity is a loneliness he rarely allows anyone to see.
The film’s visual language embraces a cold, desaturated world built from blues, whites, and greys, stripping the frame of warmth and comfort. Color is intentionally restrained, creating an atmosphere that feels emotionally starved and quietly oppressive. Within this muted environment, the characters appear strikingly ordinary; plain, everyday people trapped inside a situation that is deeply unnatural. That contrast between banal surfaces and disturbing circumstances drives the film’s tension.
The camera observes with precision and distance, favoring composed frames, stillness, and subtly unnatural movement. Performances and blocking lean into restraint, allowing discomfort, absurdity, and power dynamics to emerge without explanation. Humor and unease exist side by side, turning mundane spaces into something uncanny. The result is a world that feels both recognizable and deeply wrong, where emotional repression becomes visible through image, rhythm, and space.
The Lobster (Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
Safe (Dir. Todd Haynes)
Dogtooth (Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
But I'm a Cheerleader (Dir. Jamie Babbit)
Pre-production: April-July 2026
Production: July 29-August 2
Post-production: August-November 2026
Film Festival Submissions: 2027!
Your contributions will directly support the making of the film by helping us provide meals for cast and crew during production, secure key locations, build out production design and wardrobe, cover transportation for crew and talent, rent additional equipment, and complete post-production through professional color grading and sound mixing. Every donation goes toward bringing the film to life at the highest level possible.
Visit the Wishlist page to learn more about the larger, specific costs of this production.
You can help by sharing our campaign with friends, family, and anyone who believes in independent film. Any contribution, big or small, truly helps move this project forward. You can support by selecting one of the incentive packages on this page, each offering special perks in return, or by choosing your own custom donation amount. Every bit of support brings us closer to making this film a reality!
This story is incredibly personal to me because I feel this subject is rarely explored with all of its nuance and emotional complexity. Yorgos Lanthimos has been a major inspiration to me since I was fifteen, and I’ve always admired the honesty and fearlessness in his work. With this film, I wanted to create something that felt deeply authentic to my own voice while exploring a subject that matters greatly to me.
It’s important to me that daughters feel seen in experiences where parental boundaries have been blurred, and that the emotions that come from those experiences (confusion, discomfort, anger) are treated with honesty and compassion. At the same time, I wanted to examine and subtly satirize the behavior of older men who seek validation through younger women, while also acknowledging their humanity and vulnerability.
Ultimately, this film is interested in contradiction. No one is entirely innocent, and no one is entirely irredeemable. Each character is navigating loneliness, desire, insecurity, and the complicated ways people try to avoid emotional pain.
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Locations
Costs $2,000
Our locations include the main treatment center, two motel rooms, and a train station.
Transportation
Costs $1,750
Costs would go towards transporting our crew, cast/extras, and shooting equipment from Manhattan to upstate NY.
Insurance
Costs $825
General liability, equipment insurance, and worker's comp is crucial for this production.
Production Design
Costs $1,900
Our script has various props and production design needs to make the world of these characters feel alive.
Wardrobe + Hair & Makeup
Costs $800
From the treatment center uniforms to fake blood, this category is crucial for making the characters feel alive.
Camera / Sound Consumables
Costs $325
Camera and sound consumables are essential day-to-day production materials that ensure our equipment runs reliably throughout the shoot.
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
WRITER / DIRECTOR- Beatrice Barnes
Beatrice Barnes is a 21-year-old writer and director based in New York City. Her taste ranges from magical surrealism to erotic thrillers, drawing inspiration from Haruki Murakami novels and films like The Piano Teacher. She currently attends School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.
Her short film Bad Behavior has wrapped production and is currently being submitted to festivals. She is also in pre-production on her next short, Dry Heave. She describes her writing style as an intrusive thought, drawn to taboo subjects and uncomfortable truths. Through her filmmaking, she aims to unsettle audiences while also reminding them they are not alone in their darkest fantasies.
PRODUCER- Paulís Cofresí
Paulís Cofresí is a 21-year-old director and producer from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Her debut short film, Nos Persiguen (2022), was screened in theaters across Puerto Rico and North America. It screened in festivals such as Slamdance, HollyShorts, and the Miami Film Festival. She won Best Director at the All American High School Film Festival and was selected as a panelist for the YoungArts × FutureVisions 2025 event in Los Angeles, hosted by Moonlight’s Tarrel Alvin McCartney. Her newest short film, Cadencia (2026), recipient of a YoungArts grant, is completed and currently preparing for its festival premiere.
Cofresí was a Festival Programmer for the 2026 Slamdance Film Festival and is currently developing several short-form projects under Isora Studios, her production company. She is currently completing her BFA at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, New York.
CASTING DIRECTOR- Oona Laurence
Oona Laurence (they/she) is an actress and casting director based in NYC. She is a recipient of the Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre and a Grammy Award Nominee for Matilda the Musical. Broadway: Matilda the Musical. Off Broadway: Lilly in The Binding of Lilly (Theatre Aspen). Educational Theater Credits: Karlie in Luna Gale, The Boy in Socrates, Miranda in The Tempest, Moritz in Spring Awakening. Film: Red Ink, Southpaw, Lamb, The Grief of Others, Pete's Dragon, Bad Moms, A Bad Mom's Christmas, The Beguiled, Big Time Adolescence, Lost Girls, A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting, and more. Voiceover: “Summer Camp Island” (Cartoon Network). Acting BFA from Conservatory of Theater Arts at Purchase College. Laurence is represented by CESD and Zoom Talent Management. Oona has worked with Kate Antognini’s casting office, helping cast multiple A24 projects such as SCAM directed by Conner O’Malley, and Peacock’s Superfakes starring Lucy Liu. She is experienced in online and in person street scouting non actors and actors alike. She has worked at the Public Theater as an audition reader for Kate Murray and Heidi Griffiths. She is currently casting A REAL STRANGER, an NYU thesis film, and BOTTOM FEEDER, a short film directed by Ethan Manuel Homen.
CINEMATOGRAPHER- Vincent Longo
Vincent Longo is a Director of Photography, Gaffer, and Key Grip based in New York City and has worked in the Film and Photography business for 10 years. His interests lie in telling stories about people who capture the contemporary human condition through photography and film.
Vincent has crewed on feature films, short films, TV pilots, and music videos for such artists and directors as Sean Price Williams, Charli XCX, and Joey Badass. Additionally, he has Gripped and Gaffed on commercial sets, including brands such as Adidas, Maybelline, New Era, Raising Cane's and Sephora. Additionally, Vincent has 10 years of experience in both Premiere Pro and Lightroom and is also proficient in Photoshop and Davinci.
His current film is a documentary of RD357, one of New York’s most prolific graffiti writers over the past 40 years about the artist's addiction to crime and graffiti throughout his life. The film will be completed in January 2027.
LINE PRODUCER- Bella Rieth
Bella Rieth is a Brazilian-German director and producer known for her psychological dramas that explore the fragile boundaries of identity, obsession, and unraveling psyches. Drawn to morally ambiguous characters and unconventional narratives, Bella crafts stories that blend stark realism with eerie subjectivity, immersing audiences in unsettling yet deeply human experiences.
Her breakthrough came with the short film Poor Creatures (14 mins), which premiered at the TCL Chinese Theatres during the Golden State Film Festival and later streamed on the Roku Daily Shorts Channel. She followed this with Producing Checkmate (10 mins), a film that earned recognition on Film Shortage as a Daily Shorts Pick in 2022.
Bella is set to release Lottie (24 mins), a psychological drama set in 1973 New England about a 15-year-old girl using her Super 8 camera as a lifeline while spiraling into obsession and delusion. The film solidified her signature storytelling style—blurring the line between perception and reality.
She is currently developing multiple feature projects, including South of the Border, and Poor Creature further expanding her distinct approach to psychological storytelling.
Through Kunsthouse Productions, which she founded in 2021, Bella continues to push boundaries in independent filmmaking, balancing artistic vision with resourceful production. With a commitment to crafting narratives that challenge perception and linger in the mind long after the credits roll.
Current Team
Incentives
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
You can learn more about our crew so far on the Team page of this campaign.
Sabean walks in on her father, Jason, having sex with her twenty year old roommate which sets off a chain of events that irrevocably changes both of their lives. Sabean forces and commits her father to a treatment center in upstate NY, where they both spend 3 nights together. Focusing on teaching middle aged men to be attracted to women their own age, the treatment is led by a determined head nurse named Chrissy who tells the men that they’re infected by a “sickness” that will spread to their daughters if they don’t kill their sexual fantasies. The sickness will make their daughters slowly turn into their fathers, leading them to have the same sexual perversions. During the treatment, Jason and Sabean meet a father daughter pair named Mark and Laura, that tests their relationship.
SABEAN - 20, LEAD
Sabean is guarded, exhausted, and emotionally far older than she should be. Sharp-witted and observant, she has spent most of her life parenting her father. She craves normalcy and stability, but feels trapped inside a relationship dynamic she cannot escape. At the treatment center, Sabean clings to the hope that her father might finally change. Beneath her restraint is a growing frustration, grief, and desperation. She carries herself like someone stretched far beyond her limits, slowly realizing that the future she wants may never arrive.
JASON - 50s, LEAD
Jason is charming, funny, and deeply immature; a man still clinging to the illusion of youth. Stylish and confident on the surface, he masks his aging with forced charisma and a refusal to grow up. Cynical, argumentative, and incapable of admitting fault, he finds humor in almost everything.
Around his 20-year-old daughter, Sabean, he regresses even further, slipping into a dynamic that feels more like siblings than parent and child. He romanticizes their unconventional closeness and avoids confronting the consequences of his behavior. Beneath his absurdity is a loneliness he rarely allows anyone to see.
The film’s visual language embraces a cold, desaturated world built from blues, whites, and greys, stripping the frame of warmth and comfort. Color is intentionally restrained, creating an atmosphere that feels emotionally starved and quietly oppressive. Within this muted environment, the characters appear strikingly ordinary; plain, everyday people trapped inside a situation that is deeply unnatural. That contrast between banal surfaces and disturbing circumstances drives the film’s tension.
The camera observes with precision and distance, favoring composed frames, stillness, and subtly unnatural movement. Performances and blocking lean into restraint, allowing discomfort, absurdity, and power dynamics to emerge without explanation. Humor and unease exist side by side, turning mundane spaces into something uncanny. The result is a world that feels both recognizable and deeply wrong, where emotional repression becomes visible through image, rhythm, and space.
The Lobster (Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
Safe (Dir. Todd Haynes)
Dogtooth (Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
But I'm a Cheerleader (Dir. Jamie Babbit)
Pre-production: April-July 2026
Production: July 29-August 2
Post-production: August-November 2026
Film Festival Submissions: 2027!
Your contributions will directly support the making of the film by helping us provide meals for cast and crew during production, secure key locations, build out production design and wardrobe, cover transportation for crew and talent, rent additional equipment, and complete post-production through professional color grading and sound mixing. Every donation goes toward bringing the film to life at the highest level possible.
Visit the Wishlist page to learn more about the larger, specific costs of this production.
You can help by sharing our campaign with friends, family, and anyone who believes in independent film. Any contribution, big or small, truly helps move this project forward. You can support by selecting one of the incentive packages on this page, each offering special perks in return, or by choosing your own custom donation amount. Every bit of support brings us closer to making this film a reality!
This story is incredibly personal to me because I feel this subject is rarely explored with all of its nuance and emotional complexity. Yorgos Lanthimos has been a major inspiration to me since I was fifteen, and I’ve always admired the honesty and fearlessness in his work. With this film, I wanted to create something that felt deeply authentic to my own voice while exploring a subject that matters greatly to me.
It’s important to me that daughters feel seen in experiences where parental boundaries have been blurred, and that the emotions that come from those experiences (confusion, discomfort, anger) are treated with honesty and compassion. At the same time, I wanted to examine and subtly satirize the behavior of older men who seek validation through younger women, while also acknowledging their humanity and vulnerability.
Ultimately, this film is interested in contradiction. No one is entirely innocent, and no one is entirely irredeemable. Each character is navigating loneliness, desire, insecurity, and the complicated ways people try to avoid emotional pain.
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Locations
Costs $2,000
Our locations include the main treatment center, two motel rooms, and a train station.
Transportation
Costs $1,750
Costs would go towards transporting our crew, cast/extras, and shooting equipment from Manhattan to upstate NY.
Insurance
Costs $825
General liability, equipment insurance, and worker's comp is crucial for this production.
Production Design
Costs $1,900
Our script has various props and production design needs to make the world of these characters feel alive.
Wardrobe + Hair & Makeup
Costs $800
From the treatment center uniforms to fake blood, this category is crucial for making the characters feel alive.
Camera / Sound Consumables
Costs $325
Camera and sound consumables are essential day-to-day production materials that ensure our equipment runs reliably throughout the shoot.
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
WRITER / DIRECTOR- Beatrice Barnes
Beatrice Barnes is a 21-year-old writer and director based in New York City. Her taste ranges from magical surrealism to erotic thrillers, drawing inspiration from Haruki Murakami novels and films like The Piano Teacher. She currently attends School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.
Her short film Bad Behavior has wrapped production and is currently being submitted to festivals. She is also in pre-production on her next short, Dry Heave. She describes her writing style as an intrusive thought, drawn to taboo subjects and uncomfortable truths. Through her filmmaking, she aims to unsettle audiences while also reminding them they are not alone in their darkest fantasies.
PRODUCER- Paulís Cofresí
Paulís Cofresí is a 21-year-old director and producer from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Her debut short film, Nos Persiguen (2022), was screened in theaters across Puerto Rico and North America. It screened in festivals such as Slamdance, HollyShorts, and the Miami Film Festival. She won Best Director at the All American High School Film Festival and was selected as a panelist for the YoungArts × FutureVisions 2025 event in Los Angeles, hosted by Moonlight’s Tarrel Alvin McCartney. Her newest short film, Cadencia (2026), recipient of a YoungArts grant, is completed and currently preparing for its festival premiere.
Cofresí was a Festival Programmer for the 2026 Slamdance Film Festival and is currently developing several short-form projects under Isora Studios, her production company. She is currently completing her BFA at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, New York.
CASTING DIRECTOR- Oona Laurence
Oona Laurence (they/she) is an actress and casting director based in NYC. She is a recipient of the Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre and a Grammy Award Nominee for Matilda the Musical. Broadway: Matilda the Musical. Off Broadway: Lilly in The Binding of Lilly (Theatre Aspen). Educational Theater Credits: Karlie in Luna Gale, The Boy in Socrates, Miranda in The Tempest, Moritz in Spring Awakening. Film: Red Ink, Southpaw, Lamb, The Grief of Others, Pete's Dragon, Bad Moms, A Bad Mom's Christmas, The Beguiled, Big Time Adolescence, Lost Girls, A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting, and more. Voiceover: “Summer Camp Island” (Cartoon Network). Acting BFA from Conservatory of Theater Arts at Purchase College. Laurence is represented by CESD and Zoom Talent Management. Oona has worked with Kate Antognini’s casting office, helping cast multiple A24 projects such as SCAM directed by Conner O’Malley, and Peacock’s Superfakes starring Lucy Liu. She is experienced in online and in person street scouting non actors and actors alike. She has worked at the Public Theater as an audition reader for Kate Murray and Heidi Griffiths. She is currently casting A REAL STRANGER, an NYU thesis film, and BOTTOM FEEDER, a short film directed by Ethan Manuel Homen.
CINEMATOGRAPHER- Vincent Longo
Vincent Longo is a Director of Photography, Gaffer, and Key Grip based in New York City and has worked in the Film and Photography business for 10 years. His interests lie in telling stories about people who capture the contemporary human condition through photography and film.
Vincent has crewed on feature films, short films, TV pilots, and music videos for such artists and directors as Sean Price Williams, Charli XCX, and Joey Badass. Additionally, he has Gripped and Gaffed on commercial sets, including brands such as Adidas, Maybelline, New Era, Raising Cane's and Sephora. Additionally, Vincent has 10 years of experience in both Premiere Pro and Lightroom and is also proficient in Photoshop and Davinci.
His current film is a documentary of RD357, one of New York’s most prolific graffiti writers over the past 40 years about the artist's addiction to crime and graffiti throughout his life. The film will be completed in January 2027.
LINE PRODUCER- Bella Rieth
Bella Rieth is a Brazilian-German director and producer known for her psychological dramas that explore the fragile boundaries of identity, obsession, and unraveling psyches. Drawn to morally ambiguous characters and unconventional narratives, Bella crafts stories that blend stark realism with eerie subjectivity, immersing audiences in unsettling yet deeply human experiences.
Her breakthrough came with the short film Poor Creatures (14 mins), which premiered at the TCL Chinese Theatres during the Golden State Film Festival and later streamed on the Roku Daily Shorts Channel. She followed this with Producing Checkmate (10 mins), a film that earned recognition on Film Shortage as a Daily Shorts Pick in 2022.
Bella is set to release Lottie (24 mins), a psychological drama set in 1973 New England about a 15-year-old girl using her Super 8 camera as a lifeline while spiraling into obsession and delusion. The film solidified her signature storytelling style—blurring the line between perception and reality.
She is currently developing multiple feature projects, including South of the Border, and Poor Creature further expanding her distinct approach to psychological storytelling.
Through Kunsthouse Productions, which she founded in 2021, Bella continues to push boundaries in independent filmmaking, balancing artistic vision with resourceful production. With a commitment to crafting narratives that challenge perception and linger in the mind long after the credits roll.