SLUSH
Chicago, Illinois | Film Short
Drama, Family
SLUSH is an intimate drama based on a true story. It's a film about the burden of innocence, the abuse of power, and the failure of institutions. Set in 1979, it follows a young girl coming of age in a world where safety, love, and faith twist into something murky — and heartbreakingly human.
SLUSH
Chicago, Illinois | Film Short
Drama, Family
1 Campaigns | California, United States
Green Light
This campaign raised $25,540 for production. Follow the filmmaker to receive future updates on this project.
106 supporters | followers
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SLUSH is an intimate drama based on a true story. It's a film about the burden of innocence, the abuse of power, and the failure of institutions. Set in 1979, it follows a young girl coming of age in a world where safety, love, and faith twist into something murky — and heartbreakingly human.
About The Project
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
SLUSH is my first short film — based on a true story and adapted from my memoir, The S Word. What happened to me at thirteen is something that still happens to girls and young women every day.
I am now 61 years old, and I still remember the shame — questions that were asked of me instead of the adults who failed me. With SLUSH, I want to invite different questions:
- Why is the blame hers to carry?
- Where are the adults entrusted with protection?
- Who benefits when silence is maintained?
This film isn’t about monsters in the shadows. It's about the people standing in the light who look away.
SLUSH is not just one girl’s story from long ago.
It’s a story for generations of us who were taught to stay quiet, be polite, smile more, and not make trouble.
THE STORY
Set in Chicago in 1979, SLUSH follows Cecelia Messina - 13 going on 30. The daughter of Sicilian immigrants, she’s the household “consigliere” — translator, fixer, peacekeeper...a straight-A student and one of the “good girls” at her Catholic High School.
Cecilia pretends to be of legal age, working nights and weekends at the donut shop, helping her dysfunctional family make ends meet. As her mother’s illness turns affection into accusation and her father’s burdens become her own, Cecilia struggles to make it through each day. Schooled in silence and shame, she dreams of being rescued just like the heroines in her paperbacks.
Enter Officer Gunner — the kind of guy who shakes hands with fathers, charms mothers, and calls every young girl “sweetheart.” On the surface, he’s the town protector — dependable, confident, easygoing, always in control. But the badge hides a deeper hunger — to be seen as the good guy, even when he isn’t. He tells himself it’s harmless, even kind. But behind the polite tone and seductive smile, the man who swore to protect often disappears, and what’s left is harder to name.
What begins as teenage infatuation becomes a slow, sticky entrapment. Cecilia believes she can handle it — the way she handles everything beyond her years.
But as her world narrows, she learns that staying silent and daring to speak both demand their own sacrifices.
SLUSH is a true story of innocence betrayed — where safety, love, and faith twist into something murky...and heartbreakingly human.
The World of SLUSH - SLUSH unfolds in a working-class world steeped in faith, family, and responsibility. But this landscape is one where children shoulder what adults should, where the church preaches punishment instead of compassion, and where authority figures hide behind uniforms and collars. This world overlooks harm and allows actions it knows are wrong to go unchecked. Everything may look black and white on the surface — but beneath it, the truth lives in the slushy gray.
SLUSH explores themes of innocence exploited, trust betrayed, and the courage it takes to survive. It’s about authority and protection that at best are unreliable, and about how children are often tasked with navigating adults who hold all the power — and who, more often than not, abuse it.
We are in the middle of a long-overdue cultural reckoning. Survivors are speaking. Institutions are crumbling. And society is finally acknowledging what so many girls have endured in silence.
But the stories that rarely get told are the small ones — the “ordinary,” familiar moments where boundaries blur, innocence is targeted, and adults fail to step in.
SLUSH brings that quiet truth to the screen. It’s not about monsters hiding in shadows — it’s about the adults standing in the light who look away.
Girls deserve better. And the world finally may be ready to no longer look away.
WHY ME?
I see the world not as black and white, but as that uneven blend that collapses into gray — the way pure white snow turns slushy once the world has had its way with it. SLUSH brings that gray world into focus: a place where innocence is muddied by the very adults meant to protect it, and where a young girl must navigate terrain she was never meant to walk alone.
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My vision is to immerse the audience in that tension. This isn't a story told through spectacle, but through small gestures and incremental betrayals — the slow creep of danger disguised as kindness. The film will be shot in black and white with selective spots of color — a visual language that mirrors the slushy gray world around her: stark in its judgments, confusing in its contradictions, and punctured by moments of longing and fragile hope.
The camera will stay close to Cecelia, allowing the viewer to inhabit her vulnerability and the small shifts in her emotional world. The tone is intimate, restrained, and intentionally unsettling. Sound will function as a character — the hum of fluorescents, the tick of a clock — and silence will mirror the in-between space Cecilia occupies: no longer a child, not yet a woman, suspended in a place adults refuse to even acknowledge.
We'll be using the funds raised to pay for cast, crew, equipment, and all of the pieces needed to do justice to this story and to bring it to light.
WHY NOW?
SLUSH is only a fragment of my larger personal story, but it is one that belongs to far too many girls — and one that needs to be told now, in a moment when our society is finally confronting the truths we’ve long ignored.
My intentions are simple: for audiences to leave not asking, “Why did she put herself in that position?” but
“Where were the adults who should have known better and kept her safe?” If this film shifts even one conversation toward compassion and accountability, then it will have done the work it was meant to do.
I hope you’ll help bring it to life.
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Crew Labor
Costs $6,650
Paying our essential crew: DP, AD, sound, design, etc. is important. Skilled artists will bring this story to life with care and precision.
Locations & Transportation
Costs $5,867
Donut shop, church, school, period spaces, and transport. Authentic 1979 environments that ground the story.
Cast Labor
Costs $2,350
Stipends for our actors, honoring the emotional and professional work this story requires.
Camera lighting and sound equipment
Costs $1,472
Camera, lenses, lighting, professional audio gear to capture the nuances, emotional weight, and powerful performances of each scene.
Craft Services
Costs $985
Meals and care for cast and crew during long production days.
Production Design/Props/Hair/Makeup/Costume
Costs $1,132
Period-accurate props (including car rental) details that immerse us in Cecilia’s world. Wardrobe and styling to reflect 1979 authentically.
Permits and Insurance
Costs $1,850
Insurance and permits to protect our cast, crew, locations, and production.
Marketing and Festivals
Costs $1,475
Festival fees, press, and promotion to ensure the film reaches audiences.
Post Production
Costs $2,575
Editing, sound design, color, and final mix. Where tone, rhythm, and impact are shaped.
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
Sofia Sioris serves as both Line Producer and First Assistant Director on SLUSH, wearing multiple hats with precision and grace. As Line Producer, she manages budget, scheduling, and logistics to ensure the film is executed responsibly. As First AD, she leads the set with clarity and calm, coordinating departments and translating creative vision into focused action. A true can-do professional and solution-finder extraordinaire, Sofia brings diplomacy, kindness, and steady leadership to every challenge. I’m incredibly fortunate to have her guiding this production.
Cecelia Hubbard as Cinematographer on SLUSH, brings an extraordinary eye for light, shadow, and emotional truth. She crafts images that live in the gray — subtle, restrained, and deeply intentional — elevating the story beyond dialogue and into atmosphere. Her work doesn’t simply document a scene; it shapes how it is felt. With both technical mastery and instinctive artistry, Cecilia translates vision into powerful visual language with such authenticity. I am incredibly fortunate to have her behind the camera.
Destiny Valles is our Production Designer / Set Dresser / Props Master. She brings deep experience in period storytelling and an instinct for authenticity. She understands that props and environments shape emotional truth, not just aesthetics. From sourcing era-accurate details to crafting spaces that feel lived-in and layered, Destiny ensures every frame supports the story’s integrity. Her resourcefulness and precision elevate the film’s visual world in powerful, often invisible ways.
Lila Rowel is our Production Sound Mixer. She brings a passion for capturing authentic performances and the subtle emotional textures that bring a story to life. With a keen ear for atmosphere and dialogue, she specializes in creating soundscapes that support intimate, character-driven storytelling. Lila is exactly who SLUSH wants on our team, and we couldn't be happier for her to join us in helping to translate this powerful story to the screen with clarity and care.
Current Team
Incentives
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
SLUSH is my first short film — based on a true story and adapted from my memoir, The S Word. What happened to me at thirteen is something that still happens to girls and young women every day.
I am now 61 years old, and I still remember the shame — questions that were asked of me instead of the adults who failed me. With SLUSH, I want to invite different questions:
- Why is the blame hers to carry?
- Where are the adults entrusted with protection?
- Who benefits when silence is maintained?
This film isn’t about monsters in the shadows. It's about the people standing in the light who look away.
SLUSH is not just one girl’s story from long ago.
It’s a story for generations of us who were taught to stay quiet, be polite, smile more, and not make trouble.
THE STORY
Set in Chicago in 1979, SLUSH follows Cecelia Messina - 13 going on 30. The daughter of Sicilian immigrants, she’s the household “consigliere” — translator, fixer, peacekeeper...a straight-A student and one of the “good girls” at her Catholic High School.
Cecilia pretends to be of legal age, working nights and weekends at the donut shop, helping her dysfunctional family make ends meet. As her mother’s illness turns affection into accusation and her father’s burdens become her own, Cecilia struggles to make it through each day. Schooled in silence and shame, she dreams of being rescued just like the heroines in her paperbacks.
Enter Officer Gunner — the kind of guy who shakes hands with fathers, charms mothers, and calls every young girl “sweetheart.” On the surface, he’s the town protector — dependable, confident, easygoing, always in control. But the badge hides a deeper hunger — to be seen as the good guy, even when he isn’t. He tells himself it’s harmless, even kind. But behind the polite tone and seductive smile, the man who swore to protect often disappears, and what’s left is harder to name.
What begins as teenage infatuation becomes a slow, sticky entrapment. Cecilia believes she can handle it — the way she handles everything beyond her years.
But as her world narrows, she learns that staying silent and daring to speak both demand their own sacrifices.
SLUSH is a true story of innocence betrayed — where safety, love, and faith twist into something murky...and heartbreakingly human.
The World of SLUSH - SLUSH unfolds in a working-class world steeped in faith, family, and responsibility. But this landscape is one where children shoulder what adults should, where the church preaches punishment instead of compassion, and where authority figures hide behind uniforms and collars. This world overlooks harm and allows actions it knows are wrong to go unchecked. Everything may look black and white on the surface — but beneath it, the truth lives in the slushy gray.
SLUSH explores themes of innocence exploited, trust betrayed, and the courage it takes to survive. It’s about authority and protection that at best are unreliable, and about how children are often tasked with navigating adults who hold all the power — and who, more often than not, abuse it.
We are in the middle of a long-overdue cultural reckoning. Survivors are speaking. Institutions are crumbling. And society is finally acknowledging what so many girls have endured in silence.
But the stories that rarely get told are the small ones — the “ordinary,” familiar moments where boundaries blur, innocence is targeted, and adults fail to step in.
SLUSH brings that quiet truth to the screen. It’s not about monsters hiding in shadows — it’s about the adults standing in the light who look away.
Girls deserve better. And the world finally may be ready to no longer look away.
WHY ME?
I see the world not as black and white, but as that uneven blend that collapses into gray — the way pure white snow turns slushy once the world has had its way with it. SLUSH brings that gray world into focus: a place where innocence is muddied by the very adults meant to protect it, and where a young girl must navigate terrain she was never meant to walk alone.
My vision is to immerse the audience in that tension. This isn't a story told through spectacle, but through small gestures and incremental betrayals — the slow creep of danger disguised as kindness. The film will be shot in black and white with selective spots of color — a visual language that mirrors the slushy gray world around her: stark in its judgments, confusing in its contradictions, and punctured by moments of longing and fragile hope.
The camera will stay close to Cecelia, allowing the viewer to inhabit her vulnerability and the small shifts in her emotional world. The tone is intimate, restrained, and intentionally unsettling. Sound will function as a character — the hum of fluorescents, the tick of a clock — and silence will mirror the in-between space Cecilia occupies: no longer a child, not yet a woman, suspended in a place adults refuse to even acknowledge.
We'll be using the funds raised to pay for cast, crew, equipment, and all of the pieces needed to do justice to this story and to bring it to light.
WHY NOW?
SLUSH is only a fragment of my larger personal story, but it is one that belongs to far too many girls — and one that needs to be told now, in a moment when our society is finally confronting the truths we’ve long ignored.
My intentions are simple: for audiences to leave not asking, “Why did she put herself in that position?” but
“Where were the adults who should have known better and kept her safe?” If this film shifts even one conversation toward compassion and accountability, then it will have done the work it was meant to do.
I hope you’ll help bring it to life.
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Crew Labor
Costs $6,650
Paying our essential crew: DP, AD, sound, design, etc. is important. Skilled artists will bring this story to life with care and precision.
Locations & Transportation
Costs $5,867
Donut shop, church, school, period spaces, and transport. Authentic 1979 environments that ground the story.
Cast Labor
Costs $2,350
Stipends for our actors, honoring the emotional and professional work this story requires.
Camera lighting and sound equipment
Costs $1,472
Camera, lenses, lighting, professional audio gear to capture the nuances, emotional weight, and powerful performances of each scene.
Craft Services
Costs $985
Meals and care for cast and crew during long production days.
Production Design/Props/Hair/Makeup/Costume
Costs $1,132
Period-accurate props (including car rental) details that immerse us in Cecilia’s world. Wardrobe and styling to reflect 1979 authentically.
Permits and Insurance
Costs $1,850
Insurance and permits to protect our cast, crew, locations, and production.
Marketing and Festivals
Costs $1,475
Festival fees, press, and promotion to ensure the film reaches audiences.
Post Production
Costs $2,575
Editing, sound design, color, and final mix. Where tone, rhythm, and impact are shaped.
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
Sofia Sioris serves as both Line Producer and First Assistant Director on SLUSH, wearing multiple hats with precision and grace. As Line Producer, she manages budget, scheduling, and logistics to ensure the film is executed responsibly. As First AD, she leads the set with clarity and calm, coordinating departments and translating creative vision into focused action. A true can-do professional and solution-finder extraordinaire, Sofia brings diplomacy, kindness, and steady leadership to every challenge. I’m incredibly fortunate to have her guiding this production.
Cecelia Hubbard as Cinematographer on SLUSH, brings an extraordinary eye for light, shadow, and emotional truth. She crafts images that live in the gray — subtle, restrained, and deeply intentional — elevating the story beyond dialogue and into atmosphere. Her work doesn’t simply document a scene; it shapes how it is felt. With both technical mastery and instinctive artistry, Cecilia translates vision into powerful visual language with such authenticity. I am incredibly fortunate to have her behind the camera.
Destiny Valles is our Production Designer / Set Dresser / Props Master. She brings deep experience in period storytelling and an instinct for authenticity. She understands that props and environments shape emotional truth, not just aesthetics. From sourcing era-accurate details to crafting spaces that feel lived-in and layered, Destiny ensures every frame supports the story’s integrity. Her resourcefulness and precision elevate the film’s visual world in powerful, often invisible ways.
Lila Rowel is our Production Sound Mixer. She brings a passion for capturing authentic performances and the subtle emotional textures that bring a story to life. With a keen ear for atmosphere and dialogue, she specializes in creating soundscapes that support intimate, character-driven storytelling. Lila is exactly who SLUSH wants on our team, and we couldn't be happier for her to join us in helping to translate this powerful story to the screen with clarity and care.