Our team is bringing women to the forefront of action/horror both in front and behind the camera with uncompromising integrity. While this story is based on true, deeply personal events, it is a story about what any of us would be forced to summon to battle our greatest enemy.

 

On June 17th, 2019, Kelsey Bollig was in the pedestrian walkway on a green light, crossing the street to her local pharmacy, when an SUV bolted through the light at 30 miles an hour and ran over her, dragging her unconscious body across the pavement. 

She shattered 30 bones including all her ribs, spine, clavicle, and pelvis. Both lungs were punctured and collapsed due to breaks in her ribs, and her spleen and liver were lacerated. For the first few days, the doctors were unable to legally tell her that she would live. 

Our co-producer Tienlyn, nearly 9 months pregnant at the time, got the call first and drove directly to the emergency room. The support was overwhelming. Family, friends, and even strangers pitched in to help get Kelsey back on her feet. 

Kelsey spent a month in the hospital, broken, exhausted, and fighting pain and depression. She went through 5 months of surgery, intense physical therapy, countless tears, and opioid withdrawal. Tienlyn was at the hospital when Kelsey made it to her feet for the first time. Tears were shed - tears of pain, surprise, relief, and hope. We all breathed a sigh of relief. Two weeks later, Kelsey, with meds and wheelchair in tow, was strong enough to be present for her godson’s birth.

She had made it out alive. But after the war, it’s a long way back. 

You’d think that getting hit, run over, and dragged 30 feet by an SUV would be the hard part. But oddly enough, that part was a cakewalk compared to what came after. The true battle happens later, in silence, beneath the surface, and behind closed doors. It’s the struggle we want to share with you, through a stylized, surrealist lens that, from Kelsey’s perspective, is closer to the truth than the accident itself. 

To have made it to a place where we are even able to tell this story is already such a huge accomplishment from how things were only two years ago. And look at us now - we are ready to share the entire story with you! And not just the highlight reel, but the entire thing. Complete with spine-chilling inner-demons, of course. After all, this wouldn’t be a Kelsey Bollig film without them, now would it? 

This is a story about what it is like to be faced with life and death - or worse - somewhere in between. It is the story about what could happen to any of us if we succumbed to our greatest enemy - the one that lives inside of us. 

Below is a link to the full story 

https://vimeo.com/430116333

CONJURER. 

many will praise you

for walking on water

far fewer

for getting your feet wet

fewer even

for when you stood

in muddy puddles

willing an ocean. 

- Tienlyn

Please help us will our muddy puddle into the ocean that it was meant to be. 

We love you. 

 

After the success of our previous shorts, Asking For A Friend (Kelsey Bollig, 2019) and The Fourth Wall (Kelsey Bollig, 2020), our network of talent has expanded to include the best in the industry, including on our team many people who witnessed Kelsey’s recovery to varying degrees, firsthand. 
We hope to draw on this direct experience to relay the inner journey of survival within a surrealist, action-based framework that is as equally entertaining as it is emotional. While Kelsey’s accident may be a unique experience, the quest to survive despite all circumstances is universal. 

 

Our budget is carefully planned to support our cast and crew as well as to provide utmost safety precautions surrounding COVID-19. Everyone will be tested prior to shooting and we will be maintaining safety measures such as masks and social distancing when possible. 

This film not only has an incredible team around the action-packed production but, it also has an awesome team supporting the heavy Visual Effects splattered throughout the entire film. With your contribution, we will be able to pay our cast and crew as well as secure the VFX resources needed to take this film across the finish line.  It takes a lot to show the three levels of hell, and we would hate to skimp on the details (insert evil laughter here).

STRETCH GOALS

Our $25,000 goal is the bare minimum we're aiming for in order to get this film made with the quality desired while paying our cast and crew fairly. 

If we raise $30,000, we'll be able to cover the full vision of our visual effects.

If we raise $35,000, we'll be able to cover our festival, distribution, and promotional costs for completing and getting the film into the world and in front of a wider audience.

No matter how much you are able to contribute, your pledge and support means the world to us. We thank you from the bottom of our Kickstarted hearts. 

You can also help spread the word about our project by following and sharing our film on Instagram at @Kickstartmyheartthemovie

On June 17th, 2019 I was walking home from the grocery store, a bag of random selects in tow. It was a normal day, the sun was shining, I was smiling and gearing up mentally for a film scout I had in Paris 4 days later. I stopped at a 4-way intersection and waited my turn to cross the street. My mood was in such good spirits, I could have skipped across that intersection - but I only made it 3 steps off the curb. 

It took an instant for my life to change. Just one second of someone else’s neglect. 3 steps into this intersection and I was airborne on top of a white SUV after being hit at 30 mps. Given the nature of the hit, I ended up rolling under the car and being run over and dragged 20 ft under the vehicle before the driver stepped on the brakes. I was unconscious for 7 minutes and pulled from underneath the car by civilians who saw the collision. The accident shattered 30 of my bones, punctured both lungs, lacerated my spleen and liver, and ripped the skin from my left arm. I spent over a month in the hospital and spent the next 2 years of my life recovering my body and healing my soul. It took a lot to get here. And if this experience taught me anything, it’s that somewhere in me, there’s a fighter. This fighter scratched and clawed at every obstacle that’s been thrown my way in order to win my life back. 

5 months after my accident, I was healthy enough to fly to Paris, cane in hand, to direct the short I was prepping to film the day I was run over. That film was called ‘The Fourth Wall’ and to date, it has been nominated for over 17 awards won 8 awards including the Best Horror Short at the Academy Award Qualifying Hollyshorts. 

After a year inside with the rest of the world and 2 years of sitting on this story, I’ve decided that I’m ready to tackle this experience head-on. My account of this event comes to me like a dream - because while it happened so fast, it felt so slow. The minutes it took from the hit to waking up on the concrete were a fight and that fight would continue every day for the next year of my full recovery. ‘Kickstart my Heart’ is the showcase of what that fight feels like through the lens of a horror/action cinephile. It’s a physical manifestation of the levels of hell we travel through when fighting for anything in this world, especially when fighting for our lives.

 ‘Kickstart my  Heart’ is a personal story, but I hope it feels familiar to all who watch.

This film is a dive down multiple states of consciousness. As we begin our journey, all seems normal. Even the sheer act of getting hit by a car presents itself in a way that's a part of this world. Lilly's mind is a different story. Lilly is only slightly comforted when waking up in her childhood home with her supposed sister. We don't have to wait long before we learn that Lilly is not actually in her childhood home and this world is far from normal. The deeper we are taken into Lilly's mind, the more colorful the world becomes. We are taken from the warmth of sunshine shining through glass-paned windows to a neon nightmare.