Loyalty Has a Price

What if the person teaching your child about right and wrong was secretly living outside both?

OMERTA follows Ava Blake, a respected elementary school teacher with a carefully guarded second life. By day, she encourages her students, grades assignments, and moves quietly through the Ann Arbor community. By night, she carries out assignments for Tony Caruso - her uncle, the man who raised her, and the head of a powerful crime family.

Ava does not kill for money or power. She does it because she believes she owes Tony everything.

But when the FBI begins connecting years of unsolved murders to a single professional assassin - and a mysterious enemy begins dismantling the Caruso organization from within - Ava is forced to confront a question she has avoided for most of her life:

When does loyalty stop being love and become a prison?

The Story We’re Bringing to Life

OMERTA is a 10-episode crime-thriller micro-series about family, identity, moral debt, and the lives we hide from the people who think they know us best.

At the beginning of the season, Ava appears to have complete control over her two worlds. She can retrieve an assassination assignment from beneath a park bench and, moments later, respond warmly to a parent asking about homework. She can walk through a public park unnoticed, execute an assignment without hesitation, and return to the ordinary routines of her classroom.

But invisibility never lasts forever.

FBI Special Agents Christopher Jackson and Crystal Denardo begin recognizing a pattern across multiple crime scenes. The killings are precise, disciplined, and connected to Tony Caruso’s growing influence. Their investigation leads them to an unknown assassin they assume is a man.

That assumption becomes the killer’s greatest protection.

While the FBI closes in, an enemy from Tony’s past begins threatening the family’s territory - and Ava’s life outside the organization. When that danger follows her to the elementary school where she works, the separation between her two identities begins to collapse.

By the end of Season One, the FBI realizes that its entire profile is wrong.

Caruso’s invisible assassin is a woman.

They still do not know her name. They do not know she is Tony’s niece. They do not know that they may have already passed her on the streets of Ann Arbor.

But they are finally looking in the right direction.

Why I Needed to Tell This Story

I’m Robert Silver, the writer and director of OMERTA and the founder of Day One Films.

Since 2019, I have produced 12 films and directed or produced 11 projects. My work has earned seven awards and has been recognized by more than 30 film festivals. Several of my previous short films have also reached streaming audiences.

Every project has reinforced something I deeply believe: compelling filmmaking does not begin with the size of the budget. It begins with a character we cannot easily judge, a question that stays with us, and a creative team willing to build something meaningful together.

OMERTA grew from my feature-film screenplay Dual Target, but this micro-series is not simply a shortened version of a larger story. It is a focused exploration of Ava’s double life and the choices that will eventually define her.

I was drawn to Ava because she exists within contradictions.

She is compassionate and dangerous. She protects children while taking lives. She loves her uncle but resents what his love has required of her. She is both African-American and Italian-American, yet she moves through a criminal world that may never fully see her as belonging to either identity.

Ava cannot be reduced to a hero or a villain. She is a woman trying to understand whether gratitude has quietly taken ownership of her future.

That conflict is the heart of OMERTA.

Why Ann Arbor Matters

After relocating to Michigan, I wanted my next narrative project to feel connected to my new creative home.

Ann Arbor is not merely a substitute for another city in OMERTA. Its parks, trails, cafés, university spaces, businesses, and public institutions are part of the series’ visual identity.

There is something unsettling about placing a crime thriller inside locations associated with peace, learning, and community. Ava retrieves an assignment in Nichols Arboretum. A quiet riverside walk becomes a conversation about betrayal. FBI agents reconstruct murders inside an ordinary café. A threatening phone call reaches Ava outside the school where she teaches.

These public spaces help us express the central idea of the series: dangerous secrets do not always hide in dark alleys. Sometimes they move through the most familiar places without being noticed.

Our goal is to photograph Ann Arbor with cinematic intention - natural textures, restrained camera movement, moody light, and compositions that emphasize surveillance, isolation, and the feeling that someone is always watching.

What Your Support Makes Possible

We are raising $10,000 to produce all 10 episodes of OMERTA: Season One.

This is a lean production, but it is not a careless one. Your contribution will help us:

• Fairly compensate our actors and essential crew.

• Provide meals, water, and a safe working environment.

• Secure production insurance and necessary permissions.

• Create character-specific wardrobe, props, and believable FBI case files.

• Film throughout recognizable Ann Arbor locations.

• Complete professional editing, color grading, sound design, and final delivery.

• Build an audience for OMERTA and demonstrate the potential of the larger story.

I will also share honest campaign and production updates so supporters can see how their contributions move the project forward - from casting and pre-production through filming and post-production.

Our promise is not that $10,000 will make OMERTA look like a studio production with unlimited resources. Our promise is that every dollar will be used with intention, discipline, and respect for the people helping us bring the story to life.

We will lean into what makes independent filmmaking powerful: strong performances, carefully chosen locations, purposeful cinematography, creative problem-solving, and a story that values tension over spectacle.

Funding Milestones

• 2,500 — The Assignment: Core cast compensation begins.

• $5,000 — The Pattern: Halfway point; cast, crew, and wardrobe are partially funded.

• $8,000 — The Green Light: OMERTA qualifies to receive its Seed&Spark funds.

• $10,000 — The Family Business: Season One reaches its full production goal.

• $12,500 — The Ghost: Enhanced sound mix, original score, additional production design, and festival submissions.

• $15,000 — No More Secrets: Additional shooting time, behind-the-scenes documentary content, expanded marketing, and accessibility deliverables.

More Than a Season

OMERTA is designed to stand on its own as a complete first season, while also serving as proof of concept for the larger world of Dual Target.

This campaign is about more than financing production. It is about building an audience around Ava before the industry decides whether her story is worth telling.

By supporting OMERTA, you are helping us demonstrate that there is an audience for a morally complex, female-led crime thriller - and that independent filmmakers can create ambitious stories within their own communities.

You are becoming part of the project at the moment when belief matters most.

Join the Family

You can help OMERTA in three important ways:

1. Make a pledge.

2. Follow the campaign.

3. Share it with someone who believes in independent film.

Every contribution brings us closer to paying our team, stepping onto our first location, and turning these 34 scripted pages into a finished 10-episode season.

Ava Blake has spent years hiding in plain sight.

With your help, it is finally time for audiences to discover her.

OMERTA - Loyalty has a price.