A dangerous new virus is tearing through the wildlife on Last Island, an uninhabited spit of land off of Maine’s northern coast.



Mari is an ambitious young scientist at the beginning of her career. She's a headstrong idealist.

Anne is a virologist who's at what should be the peak of her career, but she hasn't yet made her mark. She is determined and ruthless. For her, failure is not an option.

Mari arrives on Last Island to join Anne. Together, they collect biological samples from dead birds and study the fast-mutating virus in isolation. Mari is inexperienced but hungry, and she asks Anne to help her launch her career. When Mari realizes that Anne has been hiding things, she has to make a decision: follow in Anne’s footsteps, or go her own way.

We plan to shoot on location in Maine. With over 4,000 islands, the Gulf of Maine is an incredibly important and complex marine habitat. Though nature remains untouched by civilization on Last Island, it cannot escape the effects of climate change. Warming waters lead to irregular migratory patterns, allowing for rapid spread and evolution of emerging diseases.

It's only a matter of time.

LAST ISLAND is about two women and a remote Maine island, where the natural environment and their tenuous relationship are both at a critical breaking point. It's a tale of ambition and humanity, and highlights the crucial work of scientists fighting to save an ecosystem on the brink of collapse.

This short film is a proof-of-concept for a feature that I began writing nearly three years ago. As emerging diseases threaten to turn our world upside down all over again, and as our planet's dwindling resources are used as a bargaining chip for oligarchs and autocrats, it's clear to me that this story is more timely than I could have anticipated.

I was born in Maine and have always wanted to make a film set there; it's where I fell in love with nature and the unique ways that people there coexist with the ocean. Viruses threaten to destroy these fragile coastal ecosystems, and the more I dove into research and interviewed scientists who do the same work as my characters, the more fascinated and compelled I became.

The virus in this film is a combination of morbillivirus and H5N1, both of which threaten the northern Atlantic marine ecosystem and the world at large. As these viruses mutate and spread between animal species, there's very little to stop them from evolving to infect humans. I've conducted interviews, read numerous papers, and visited a lab to get a sense of what this work entails day-to-day, and how these scientists view their research. I love this part of the process and it's my philosophy that this enriches both my characters and the world of the film.

Women are central to my work as a storyteller. I’m interested in ego and the price we pay for greatness. I want to examine questions of moral responsibility, duty to oneself versus duty to the collective, and the ways in which our modern world has distanced us from our intuition. I love stories about scientists: they grapple with the clash of the known and the unknown on the largest and smallest scales imaginable. I want audiences to be reminded of their innate connectedness with the natural environment.

I'm so excited about the team we're assembling, and I could not be more thrilled to shoot on location in Maine, a place that is enigmatic and historied. On our location scout, I had the magical sense that what I had imagined on the page was actually real, which felt like stepping into a living dream.

Last Island is a mysterious place, and I can't wait to bring you there.

This film is a grounded, paranoia-tinged drama that is emotionally tied to Mari's character perspective. We'll be filming in a practical, straightforward way, staying with Mari and her experience of both the island and of Anne. Some key references for this film are STALKER and CONTACT, which interrogate their characters’ humanity through the task at hand. PERSONA is also an important reference point, as it achieves a heightened sense of isolation and interiority, forcing its two lead characters to come to terms with each other.

Mari and Anne's work is not pretty: they're collecting blood and other biological samples, logging bird carcasses, making their way across mud, sand, rocks, thick forest, and wild brush. This grit and texture will come through on screen. Stylistically, our plan is to achieve a heightened realism, making the natural surroundings and the scientific work feel as true as possible. We'll rely a lot on natural light, and we want to make room for the unexpected.

The sounds of Last Island are -

Wind

Waves

Eerie silence

The soundscape of this film will create an unsettling, distinctive atmosphere which merges the natural

and the unnatural.

We're hiring most of our crew out of Portland, Maine, and bringing a few key team members from New York City. We've found all the necessary locations in Maine and are prepping to be filming out in the elements for about 3 days.

We'll jump straight into editing after the shoot, and aim to complete the film in time for festival submissions at the end of Summer 2025. If you donated to our campaign, you'll receive a screener link then, and you'll get to watch the film before anyone else! We'll also keep you abreast of festival updates and screenings in your area. Films always look better on a big screen.

The funds from this campaign will cover one-third of our planned $45,000 budget. In this ideal scenario, we will pair crowdfunded donations, which represent a significant portion of our production budget, with financing pooled from a few passionate private individuals. Both are essential to green-lighting the project and getting us over the finishing line. If our campaign surpasses 100% funded, we'll put those extra funds into post-production costs and festival submission fees, which can add up quickly.

This short film is a proof-of-concept for a feature. Your support will make this project possible and help launch us on the exciting journey of making a feature film. We can't wait to bring you along for the ride.