After earning an Oscar nomination for Chau, Beyond the Lines, Courtney Marsh pivoted toward a feature debut designed for broad access. The plan was to reach audiences directly rather than counting on a glossy festival launch.
The roadblock mattered: despite crafting multiple feature ideas, the industry’s gatekeeping and a deluge of submissions left Marsh feeling that momentum would not arrive on anticipated terms. She and her producing partner rallied to finish a lean, character-driven project — Where Did the Adults Go? — filmed in ten days with a small cast and crew, including Carey Cox, Amadeus Serafini, and Carson MacCormac.
Rather than waiting for a premiere on a marquee stage, the team decided to lean into a self-distributed release on YouTube. On October 9, the film will go live for free on the Black Phoebe Films channel, with captions and an audio description track to boost accessibility for viewers with disabilities.
In a key collaboration, Marsh partnered with The Ehlers-Danlos Society to center the story around Carey Cox and to ensure the release models openness and inclusion. Lara Bloom, the nonprofit’s president, described the plan as opening doors that are too often closed and using accessibility as a core element of the storytelling itself.
Although a top-tier festival premiere would have been nice, Marsh argues that independence today can thrive beyond traditional gatekeepers. The aim is to reach audiences everywhere, tell a story honestly, and prove that a micro-budget project can find a global watching room when the release is designed with accessibility at its heart. The movie will premiere on Thursday, October 9 on YouTube at the Black Phoebe Films page.
Source: Original article
