About this project

Could a small house be the big solution to today's society of over-consumption?

Alex, Anna and Oden leave New York for Europe, rural Sweden, to build an ecological house for $15,000 or less.

They are on a journey of self-rediscovery that ends up being a lot more challenging and fun than they ever planned.

This is the story of their fight for freedom, independence, and life in balance.

As part of this film, we also want to visit the small and ecological house movement that has set us on this journey.

It all started on the Internet, when Alex saw pictures of Simon Dale's house, http://www.simondale.net/house/, and realized that Simon built it himself with his father in law in three months. (these are the pictures in our trailer)

Living in New York, owning your home meant marrying your job and a lifetime of debt. The living expenses were simply too high, unless you were part of a select few. We started studying green building worldwide and found a community like-minded about green building, collaboration and the environment in Sweden.

What we want to do:

Make the first documentary feature film about the small houses movement.

Show that it is possible to build your own home, without a huge amount of money. People have done it for thousands of years. And what a great way to use less of Earth's resources. Building small means easier heating, less material, ans also accumulating less stuff.

Yes, there is a learning curve. Yes, there is struggle with the authorities. And oh, yes, is there struggle between ourselves. But the heroes of the film refuse to give up. Having found some land to build on, they are just waiting for the snow to thaw, then the actual building can begin.

We also want to travel to different people that have successfully built their own ecological and/or small houses and show their solutions and struggles.

How we plan to do it:

We have found land to build on. Nobody else wanted it, probably because of the shooting range nearby. Coming from Brooklyn, that is not a problem for us. We have already filmed a lot of the planning and preparations, and are waiting for the snow to thaw.

What the money is for:

Filming expenses! We need to hire a camera person to film when we are both building. Travel expenses to visit the other houses. We would like to produce this film in as high a quality as possible, to get it in front of a large audience. We both have professional film making experience and our films have been broadcast and shown at festivals before.

Ideally, we would hope to raise 100 000 dollars.

There are many quality things we could do with the larger amount, like hire a sound editor, second camera, etc. The minimum set as the project goal will allow us to make a bare-bones version of high quality, but that will take longer to produce, as we shall do most of the work ourselves. The more we raise, the more help we can get, the faster and better the film gets made.

We will continue looking for other sources of funding as well, and have already invested heavily into this film out of our own pockets.

Reach as large an audience as possible

We also plan to release the film on the Internet for free after it has exhausted the 'traditional media" channels like TV, festivals, DVDs, etc, so that it reaches the largest possible audience.

The goal with this film is very simple - The housing mortgage crisis is blamed for the near-catastrophic situation society finds itself in right now.

Could building your own home cheaply and living small be the small "big solution"?

Help us answer that question and bring attention to one possible answer.