TOWNIES opens late one night as siblings Sarah and Danny pull their beat-up Subaru into the driveway of a sprawling, lavish home. It isn’t theirs.

As the story unfolds, we learn that Sarah and Danny are year-round locals in a resort ski town. Danny works on the mountain teaching wealthy tourists to ski, while Sarah, a once promising pro-skier before a career-ending injury, now cleans the seasonal homes of affluent second homeowners. Tonight, they’ve come to rob one.

The house is unoccupied most of the year, its absentee owner barely a presence in town. What sits inside may mean nothing to him, but for Sarah, Danny, and especially their dad (who knows nothing of their heist), it could mean surviving another day in a town that’s rapidly pushing them out.

But the plan starts to unravel. As Sarah slips inside, Danny is left behind in the car, fighting off anxiety. Searching for something to calm his nerves, he digs through Sarah’s bag only to discover a possible clue to her true motive for robbing the house, which may go beyond just helping their dad… 

Inside, Sarah is confronted with an obstacle she never anticipated: the homeowner, drunk and armed. What follows is a tense, unpredictable exchange between two people who are carrying burdens the other can barely comprehend. They live worlds apart, and yet both of them call this town home. 

What unfolds inside that house irreparably changes Sarah’s life, leaving her to reckon with how she got here and what future, if any, she still has in her little town.

Growing up in a popular ski town, I always felt like there were two places existing at once. There was the postcard version of the town the tourists got to enjoy, and then there was the one where locals lived their daily lives. That collision between fairy tale and reality is the driving force behind TOWNIES, as we look below the surface to uncover the struggles often hidden underneath.

In 2014, a Rolling Stone article called Vermont “The New Face of Heroin.” To outsiders, it was shocking. To many locals, it wasn’t news at all. I never imagined the beautiful town I grew up in could also be home to such a crisis. But over the last decade, it's become clear that the opioid epidemic isn’t something happening “somewhere else”. It’s right in the middle of these seemingly idyllic communities, shaping the families, friendships, and futures of those who live there. 

But addiction isn't the only pressure transforming these towns. Affordability is pushing these communities to their breaking point. Across the country, resort towns are being reshaped by significant wealth disparities. In Deer Valley, Utah, a single-day lift ticket can cost $329. In Jackson Hole, the average single-family home has skyrocketed to $7.4 million. But this isn’t only happening in ski towns. A recent New York Times article spotlights that on Nantucket, 65% of housing is occupied by seasonal residents, leaving much of the workforce to live in substandard housing, or in some cases, out of their cars on the beach. These aren’t just statistics. They’re the lived reality of the people who keep these towns moving.

So we have to ask: at what point does the tourism industry end up destroying the very communities it relies on? And how can these towns maintain their identity when they depend on tourism to survive? Every resort town is a fragile ecosystem made up of locals, second homeowners, and tourists. But that balance grows more precarious every year. And underneath it all lies the question at the heart of our film: whose town is it, really?

This isn’t just a story about a ski town. It’s about the fault lines running through every resort community and, more broadly, through America itself. Addiction, inequality, and the fight for survival are not isolated struggles. They’re universal. And that’s what makes TOWNIES an essential story that needs to be told.

We have calculated that we need $29,800 for production costs for TOWNIES. We need to reach a minimum of 80% of our goal to be "green lit" by Seed&Spark and receive any funds raised. If we are able to exceed our campaign goal, that money will be able to go towards our post-production budget costs. With a project like ours, every penny counts!

The most important component of our budget is that everyone working on TOWNIES is fairly compensated for their time and talents. All of our actors and crew members working on this project will receive the exact same daily rate over the course of filming. With the cast and crew size we are needing for this film, the compensation to our team will be $16,500 (over half our budget). We believe it is important that everyone is treated equally in every aspect of the filmmaking process, and that starts with fair and equal compensation.

We have some "wishlist" items when it comes to specific equipment we want to use for this film, including the use of anamorphic lenses, which will give TOWNIES that classic cinematic look. We will also need to rent various equipment for our shoot, including lighting and sound equipment, as well as paying for use of specific filming locations. Those costs equal a total of $9,500.

We have also accounted for items that are usually forgotten about during the fundraising process, leaving people scrambling to come up with the funds. These include things like taxes, payroll, insurance, permits, etc., which we've calculated will add up to $3,800.

We are currently in pre-production on TOWNIES. We have our script, we have our budget, we have our projected filming schedule, and we are currently scouting and securing filming locations. We are also in the process of assembling our crew and casting our actors.

Depending on availability for our actors, crew, and locations, we plan on filming TOWNIES over a four-day shoot, up in Vermont, in the final two weeks of October, or the first week in November.

Once we wrap filming, we will begin our post-production process, which will include editing, sound mixing, coloring, and scoring TOWNIES.

Once we finish post-production, we will submit TOWNIES to film festivals. This process will begin in the spring and early summer, for summer and fall 2026 film festivals.

THEMATICALLY

THE FLORIDA PROJECT | PARASITE

TONALLY + STYLISTICALLY

THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES | KILLING THEM SOFTLY