About this project

Condition of the Heart is a winter tale of Lena, a middle-aged woman who has recently been diagnosed with a life-altering disease. In an attempt to come to terms with her transforming body, she leaves her home in the city and begins a new life at a remote cottage, where she falls in love with a creature from the lake.

Dear friends, family, strangers:

The new year has just begun and we’re about to set forth on a new feature film entitled Condition of the Heart and we’re here to ask for your help. The festival frenzy of our first feature, Amy George, is quieting down, and although the two years devoted to that particular beast yielded wonderful results and much in the way of, you know, learning, we’re more than a little excited to embark upon something new.

In a little over a month’s time we’ll be descending upon the frost-ridden forests and lakes of Northern Ontario. Under the shelter of a small, hopefully cozy cottage a varied assemblage of talented upstarts will cook, clean, argue, bond, stave off frostbite, and emerge with a film in hand.

A monster film exploring both loneliness and fear, Condition of the Heart is, more than anything else, a drama. Still, there are diverse elements of unconventional horror that we wish to exploit and incorporate into the more traditional chamber-piece that the story takes its origins from.

No matter how simple our ideas are at the start, we seem to end up with at least one element that requires more attention than anticipated. While we want to remain a little quiet about what exactly happens with the creature, we can say that it plays a pretty dominant role. We intend to design and build a creature that’s not only visually distinctive, but is also believably integrated into the realism of the world around it. We’ll be sharing select elements of the design and creation process with you as we begin construction.

Over the next month or so, we’ll be raising a total of over $25,000 to produce the film; this Kickstarter campaign represents only a portion of the necessary funds. Kickstarter’s all-or-nothing financing strategy means that we have to reach (or exceed!) our goal, otherwise we’re totally out of luck. Please donate what you can and share this page and this video with anyone who may be interested. We are dependent upon the kindness of strangers (and friends and family).

Our composer, Lev Lewis, sings a song for Condition of the Heart...

What’s the schedule?

As we mentioned above, cameras will roll in a little over a month (late February or early March). We’ve scheduled a 3-week production up at the cottage, where our editor (and composer), Lev Lewis, will be cutting the film together as we shoot. After principle photography wraps, we’re heading straight into post, intending to complete the film before the beginning of the summer and with the hopes of starting the festival circuit in late summer/early fall.

Why should you support us?

Two years ago we embarked upon our first feature, Amy George. Without the aid of additional producers or a production company we managed to pull together cast, crew, financing, and principle photography within only a few months. A year later the film was edited, scored, mixed and embarking upon a festival run. We won the Spirit Award at the Brooklyn Film Festival, played the Toronto International Film Festival, as well stops at a handful of other festivals including the International Rome Film Festival. With the experience of Amy George behind us we're confident that this next endeavour will go even further.

People had some nice things to say about Amy George:

“An impressive first feature... Lewis and Thomas have crafted an unusually acute portrait of adolescence.”
Jason Anderson, The Grid

"...leagues ahead of most indie festival fare. ...we hope there is more to come from Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas.”
Christopher Bell, Indiewire’s The Playlist

"Driven by a wonderful lead performance by young Gabriel del Castillo Mullally, the film remains true to a specific social environment, and its events, however large in the mind of its protagonist, are no more than ripples on the surface of its undemonstrative observational style."
Dan Sallitt, MUBI

“Brilliant performances mixed with stunning cinematography and solid direction puts Amy George near the top of my list of standouts at this year’s festival.”
Brian McKenchnie, Criticize This!

“...a pitch-perfect performance by Gabriel del Castillo Mullally... For all its seeming waywardness, the movie is, in fact, quite tightly structured, its milieu well-observed, the dialogue smart, occasionally hilarious.”
James Adams, The Globe and Mail

“It’s a remarkably self-assured debut...”
James McNally, Toronto Screen Shots

What do we need money for?