Independent Filmmaking
Fort Maria
Winner, Best Narrative Film - Ashland Independent Film Festival
Winner, Best Cinematography - Ashland Independent Film Festival
Winner, Best Director - Bend Film Festival
"Shot in silvery black-and-white by writer-directors S. Cagney Gentry and Thom Southerland, Fort Maria is what the filmmakers call "an unscripted filmic experiment" — a description that might suggest something arch or humorless. But it's neither, avoiding heavy-handed artifice and narrative cliche and finding the tenderness, fire and everyday absurdity beneath its contained-verging-on-deadpan surface." -- The Hollywood Reporter
Maria is a woman with no country. A Bulgarian immigrant and adoptive mother of a black daughter, she finds herself suddenly stricken with agoraphobia following a break-in at her home in Kentucky. When her daughter’s aging dog dies, Maria’s confinement puts her into equally painful and funny situations that soon entangle her neighbors.
As Maria copes with the issues that have led her - a world traveler - into her self-inflicted prison, her daughter Meredith discovers her own identity through a search for her biological family.
88 minutes - 2018
Fort Maria - Official Trailer
PROUD CITIZEN official trailer
Proud Citizen
Winner, Best Narrative Film - New Orleans Film Festival
Winner, Best Narrative Feature - Athens International Film + Video Festival
Winner, Audience Award - RiverRun International Film Festival, Knoxville Film Festival
Winner, Best of the Fest - River's Edge International Film Festival
Winner, Special Jury Prize/Best Actress Katerina Stoykova - Florida Film Festival
"The film has an uncanny documentary look and feel, to the point where I had to keep reminding myself 'this couldn't have happened with a camera in the room"Paul Sbrizzi/hammertonail.com
"Dappled with moments of surprise lyricism, capturing perfectly the dawning wisdom of middle age" Jonathan Kieran/New Orleans Film Festival
"Proud Citizen is warm, smart, witty and sad. It embodies all that's great about regional cinema." Paul Harrill/Self-Reliant Films
After winning second place in a play writing contest, Bulgarian Krasimira Stanimirova travels to the rolling hills of Kentucky for the premiere of her autobiographical, Communist-era play Black Coat. Expecting southern hospitality, Krasi instead finds herself isolated and lonely as she explores America on foot. Proud Citizen is a funny, sometimes heartbreaking meditation on disappointment, traveling, the comfort of strangers and the joy of funnel cakes.
89 minutes - 2014