Heritage Day
Los Angeles, California | Film Short
Comedy, Drama
Eight-year-old Evie becomes obsessed with playing Holocaust after dressing up as her estranged grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, for "Heritage Day" at school. Inspired by a true event, this dark comedy explores the strife between mother & child, and how society reckons with its past.
Heritage Day
Los Angeles, California | Film Short
Comedy, Drama

1 Campaigns | California, United States
Green Light
This campaign raised $37,080 for post-production. Follow the filmmaker to receive future updates on this project.
167 supporters | followers
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Eight-year-old Evie becomes obsessed with playing Holocaust after dressing up as her estranged grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, for "Heritage Day" at school. Inspired by a true event, this dark comedy explores the strife between mother & child, and how society reckons with its past.
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
Eight-year-old Evie becomes increasingly obsessed with playing Holocaust after dressing up as her estranged grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, for "Heritage Day" at school. (Check out our amazingly talented cast on the MEDIA page!)
Heritage Day explores the comedic irony that Evie is recreating a world that everyone else is trying to forget. Evie playing Holocaust looks mortifying to everyone else, but she doesn't see it that way. Children often don’t understand the cultural and social lines of what games are okay to play and what are not. Evie is at the age where her truth drives her actions and her behavior raises a question for her mother Sarah: is role playing what her grandmother went through an uncouth trivialization or an innocent processing of a harsh reality? It makes Sarah question herself as a parent and ultimately sympathize more with her own mom.
Our society is deeply uncomfortable with the dark parts of history and our maltreatment of humanity, so how do we teach our children to honor their heritage without romanticizing the trauma?
The Holocaust is a very delicate topic, one that has primarily been handled through documentary and drama, but rarely through the lens of dark comedy and subsequent generations. Heritage Day tackles just that.
Taking place in the mid-1980s, Heritage Day embraces all the cultural iconography, bold colors and funky patterns of the 1980s. Popularity reigned, bullies were real, and fitting in mattered. It's in this climate that Evie is pushing against boundaries and taboos with her increasingly tattered "concentration camp" attire that contrasts starkly with the loud happy prints of her peers. This film embodies a tone akin to the grounded dark humor of Dead to Me, Made for Love, Hacks, Physical and Fleabag. The film tows the line between comedy and drama where the humor is vulnerable and at times even a bit uncomfortable.
Evie is a troublemaker but it's the troublemakers of the world that disrupt that status quo and make us question the way we think.
Lara's grandparents were Holocaust survivors.
And this film is inspired from a personal incident in Lara's childhood where she wanted to dress up like her Auschwitz suriviving grandmother, Eva, for a heritage presentation. While this film takes places in the 1980s, it tackles a massive shadow that is culturally bursting to be discussed. This is a mother/child story that explores how children process their own family history. This is both a period piece and a NOW piece. Thorugh the portal of something personal we are touching on global society's deep need to reckon with the past.
Here are a few photos of Lara with her grandparents. The black and white one is an "easter egg" (a referential or hidden prop) in the film. There is a written note from my grandfather still taped to the photo from Grandparents Day at school.
Vivien wanted to speak to a Holocaust survivor before filming.
Since both of Lara's grandparents have passed, she was connected to an incredible woman named Erika Jacoby who connected with Vivien about her experience before the shoot. To see a clip of Vivien sharing her conversation with Erika please watch HERE or on the "MEDIA" tab that also has behind the scenes photos and some screenshots from the film.
We were able to complete production in late 2021 with a generous grant from a non-profit org, Protect What We Love, but we now need to raise money for post-production and beyond. The money raised will go towards editing, music composition, sound design and audio mix, color correction and less sexy but uber necessary items such as insurance, legal, publicist. AND not in the least, to finally compensate some folks on our team who generously worked for deferred pay! We are hoping to complete post production on the film by end of summer 2022.
We need to raise 80% of our goal of $46,100 ($36,880) to receive our pledges from Seed & Spark.
We have a stretch goal of $50,000 to give a more padding to our edit time, festival and publicity costs and cover the crowd funding fees and incentive costs.
Below is a breakdown of our costs to completion. Please help us reach out goal by helping us spread the work and connect with people beyond our networks. Post on social media with our consent! Email links out to our campaign! Text your co-workers, friends and familiy! We're grateful!
Please help us spread the word to get to our fundraising goal. We can't do this without you!
SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT Heritage Day and share our campaign with family, friends and co-workers! FOLLOW, SHARE AND GET UPDATES ON INSTAGRAM @HeritageDayFilm where we'll post updates and lost of fun behind-the-scenes and production photos!
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Edit Team & Color Correction
Costs $10,000
Edit all day, color correct all night. It takes a village to complete a film.
Sound Design & Audio Mix
Costs $3,500
Sound design, dialogue and music mixing is a delicate art.
Title & Poster Design
Costs $1,000
Fun titles! Fun poster! We need someone to help us design this fun!
Festival Submissions
Costs $1,500
Festival submissions are like college applications. Not. Cheap.
Deferred Payments
Costs $15,100
All talent and crew deserve to be paid for their hard work (at some point... like now)!
About This Team
We are thrilled to share with you our incredible team! At the core is our onscreen mother and daughter duo - SARAH and EVIE - played by Rachel Bloom from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Vivien Lyra Blair from We Can Be Heroes and Birdbox. Rachel reunites with her Crazy Ex-Girlfriend co-star, Scott Michael Foster, who plays her husband, JAMES. Sierra Katow from HBO's Sex Lives of College Girls plays the best friend, GRETA, whose on-screen daughter NICOLE is played by Alex Jayne Go.
There is a trend in film to cast non-Jewish actors to portray the Jewish experience, and it was important to us to cast authentically in a film about heritage which meant casting a Jewish actress to play the role of Sarah and a Chinese/Japanese actress to play Greta. Rachel and Sierra were able to speak to the character's heritage in the film organically as the characters' heritage is their own.
OUR STELLAR CAST
OUR POWERHOUSE CREW
Our crew is a powerhouse of female filmmakers, and mostly moms at that!
Written and Directed by Lara Everly and Produced by Elease Lui Stemp.
This is the fourth project Lara and Elease have collaborated on together as a director/producer team. Their last short the The Big Day starred Sasheer Zamata and Paul Scheer and the film before that, Free to Laugh was about formerly incarcerated women learning stand-up comedy, which is distributed by the comedy division of New Wave Entertainment.
THE COLLABORATORS
Our camera team was two of the coolest moms directors of photography we know. Our Director of Photography was Meena Singh - who filmed this project while 8 months pregnant! And our second cinematographer was the super-talented, and our long-time collaborator Senda Bonnet.
Our amazing team is rounded out with Associate Producer Gabi Illoui, Co-Producers Vivien Lyra Blair and Liz Blair, Art direction by Dan Der Kacz, Costumes by Jennifer Ashley Connell and Gerald Saavedra and Make Up by Robert Vega. The film was executive produced Louie Schwartzberg and a co-production with Sligo Studios.
DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
In this film, I explore mother/child relationships, the psychology and imagination of children and how we handle the stigma of shameful history and it’s murky shadows. Unbearable is about eight year old Evie who dresses up like her estranged grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, on “Heritage Day” at school. She becomes increasingly obsessed with what her grandmother went through and playing Holocaust. I want to explore the comedic underbelly to the irony that Evie is recreating a world that everyone else is trying to forget. I’m interested in the conflict of finding connection and kinship to your personal heritage that happens to hail from a tragic part of history. Children often don’t even understand the culture and social lines of what games are okay to play and what is not. Evie is at the age where her truth drives her actions more than anyone else’s. Her behavior raises the question for her mother Sarah: is role playing what her grandmother went through an uncouth trivialization or an innocent processing of a harsh reality? It makes her question herself as a parent and ultimately sympathize more with her own mom. Our society is deeply uncomfortable with the dark parts of history and our maltreatment of humanity; and that’s something recent years have finally brought to light. While this takes place in the 1980’s, the theme is super topical and omnipresent.
My passion is female-centric dark comedy. I love telling stories that disrupt that status quo and make audiences re-think the way they thought about something. I gravitate toward the female-identifying experience and love to crew up with as many women as I can on my teams.
Incentives
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
Eight-year-old Evie becomes increasingly obsessed with playing Holocaust after dressing up as her estranged grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, for "Heritage Day" at school. (Check out our amazingly talented cast on the MEDIA page!)
Heritage Day explores the comedic irony that Evie is recreating a world that everyone else is trying to forget. Evie playing Holocaust looks mortifying to everyone else, but she doesn't see it that way. Children often don’t understand the cultural and social lines of what games are okay to play and what are not. Evie is at the age where her truth drives her actions and her behavior raises a question for her mother Sarah: is role playing what her grandmother went through an uncouth trivialization or an innocent processing of a harsh reality? It makes Sarah question herself as a parent and ultimately sympathize more with her own mom.
Our society is deeply uncomfortable with the dark parts of history and our maltreatment of humanity, so how do we teach our children to honor their heritage without romanticizing the trauma?
The Holocaust is a very delicate topic, one that has primarily been handled through documentary and drama, but rarely through the lens of dark comedy and subsequent generations. Heritage Day tackles just that.
Taking place in the mid-1980s, Heritage Day embraces all the cultural iconography, bold colors and funky patterns of the 1980s. Popularity reigned, bullies were real, and fitting in mattered. It's in this climate that Evie is pushing against boundaries and taboos with her increasingly tattered "concentration camp" attire that contrasts starkly with the loud happy prints of her peers. This film embodies a tone akin to the grounded dark humor of Dead to Me, Made for Love, Hacks, Physical and Fleabag. The film tows the line between comedy and drama where the humor is vulnerable and at times even a bit uncomfortable.
Evie is a troublemaker but it's the troublemakers of the world that disrupt that status quo and make us question the way we think.
Lara's grandparents were Holocaust survivors.
And this film is inspired from a personal incident in Lara's childhood where she wanted to dress up like her Auschwitz suriviving grandmother, Eva, for a heritage presentation. While this film takes places in the 1980s, it tackles a massive shadow that is culturally bursting to be discussed. This is a mother/child story that explores how children process their own family history. This is both a period piece and a NOW piece. Thorugh the portal of something personal we are touching on global society's deep need to reckon with the past.
Here are a few photos of Lara with her grandparents. The black and white one is an "easter egg" (a referential or hidden prop) in the film. There is a written note from my grandfather still taped to the photo from Grandparents Day at school.
Vivien wanted to speak to a Holocaust survivor before filming.
Since both of Lara's grandparents have passed, she was connected to an incredible woman named Erika Jacoby who connected with Vivien about her experience before the shoot. To see a clip of Vivien sharing her conversation with Erika please watch HERE or on the "MEDIA" tab that also has behind the scenes photos and some screenshots from the film.
We were able to complete production in late 2021 with a generous grant from a non-profit org, Protect What We Love, but we now need to raise money for post-production and beyond. The money raised will go towards editing, music composition, sound design and audio mix, color correction and less sexy but uber necessary items such as insurance, legal, publicist. AND not in the least, to finally compensate some folks on our team who generously worked for deferred pay! We are hoping to complete post production on the film by end of summer 2022.
We need to raise 80% of our goal of $46,100 ($36,880) to receive our pledges from Seed & Spark.
We have a stretch goal of $50,000 to give a more padding to our edit time, festival and publicity costs and cover the crowd funding fees and incentive costs.
Below is a breakdown of our costs to completion. Please help us reach out goal by helping us spread the work and connect with people beyond our networks. Post on social media with our consent! Email links out to our campaign! Text your co-workers, friends and familiy! We're grateful!
Please help us spread the word to get to our fundraising goal. We can't do this without you!
SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT Heritage Day and share our campaign with family, friends and co-workers! FOLLOW, SHARE AND GET UPDATES ON INSTAGRAM @HeritageDayFilm where we'll post updates and lost of fun behind-the-scenes and production photos!
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Edit Team & Color Correction
Costs $10,000
Edit all day, color correct all night. It takes a village to complete a film.
Sound Design & Audio Mix
Costs $3,500
Sound design, dialogue and music mixing is a delicate art.
Title & Poster Design
Costs $1,000
Fun titles! Fun poster! We need someone to help us design this fun!
Festival Submissions
Costs $1,500
Festival submissions are like college applications. Not. Cheap.
Deferred Payments
Costs $15,100
All talent and crew deserve to be paid for their hard work (at some point... like now)!
About This Team
We are thrilled to share with you our incredible team! At the core is our onscreen mother and daughter duo - SARAH and EVIE - played by Rachel Bloom from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Vivien Lyra Blair from We Can Be Heroes and Birdbox. Rachel reunites with her Crazy Ex-Girlfriend co-star, Scott Michael Foster, who plays her husband, JAMES. Sierra Katow from HBO's Sex Lives of College Girls plays the best friend, GRETA, whose on-screen daughter NICOLE is played by Alex Jayne Go.
There is a trend in film to cast non-Jewish actors to portray the Jewish experience, and it was important to us to cast authentically in a film about heritage which meant casting a Jewish actress to play the role of Sarah and a Chinese/Japanese actress to play Greta. Rachel and Sierra were able to speak to the character's heritage in the film organically as the characters' heritage is their own.
OUR STELLAR CAST
OUR POWERHOUSE CREW
Our crew is a powerhouse of female filmmakers, and mostly moms at that!
Written and Directed by Lara Everly and Produced by Elease Lui Stemp.
This is the fourth project Lara and Elease have collaborated on together as a director/producer team. Their last short the The Big Day starred Sasheer Zamata and Paul Scheer and the film before that, Free to Laugh was about formerly incarcerated women learning stand-up comedy, which is distributed by the comedy division of New Wave Entertainment.
THE COLLABORATORS
Our camera team was two of the coolest moms directors of photography we know. Our Director of Photography was Meena Singh - who filmed this project while 8 months pregnant! And our second cinematographer was the super-talented, and our long-time collaborator Senda Bonnet.
Our amazing team is rounded out with Associate Producer Gabi Illoui, Co-Producers Vivien Lyra Blair and Liz Blair, Art direction by Dan Der Kacz, Costumes by Jennifer Ashley Connell and Gerald Saavedra and Make Up by Robert Vega. The film was executive produced Louie Schwartzberg and a co-production with Sligo Studios.
DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
In this film, I explore mother/child relationships, the psychology and imagination of children and how we handle the stigma of shameful history and it’s murky shadows. Unbearable is about eight year old Evie who dresses up like her estranged grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, on “Heritage Day” at school. She becomes increasingly obsessed with what her grandmother went through and playing Holocaust. I want to explore the comedic underbelly to the irony that Evie is recreating a world that everyone else is trying to forget. I’m interested in the conflict of finding connection and kinship to your personal heritage that happens to hail from a tragic part of history. Children often don’t even understand the culture and social lines of what games are okay to play and what is not. Evie is at the age where her truth drives her actions more than anyone else’s. Her behavior raises the question for her mother Sarah: is role playing what her grandmother went through an uncouth trivialization or an innocent processing of a harsh reality? It makes her question herself as a parent and ultimately sympathize more with her own mom. Our society is deeply uncomfortable with the dark parts of history and our maltreatment of humanity; and that’s something recent years have finally brought to light. While this takes place in the 1980’s, the theme is super topical and omnipresent.
My passion is female-centric dark comedy. I love telling stories that disrupt that status quo and make audiences re-think the way they thought about something. I gravitate toward the female-identifying experience and love to crew up with as many women as I can on my teams.