BROTHER
FISCALLY SPONSORED BY bREAKING THROUGH THE LENS,
a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization (EIN: 88-3840078)
making all donations tax-deductible for u.s. citizens.
Brother, Directed by Cassidy Batiz | Copyright Citrine Productions
HOVER OVER PHOTOS FOR TEAM BIOS AND PROJECT DESCRIPTION
CASSIDY BATIZ | Writer/Director (she/they)
Cassidy is a director, writer, and editor from Dallas, Texas, based in Brooklyn, New York. She recently graduated with an MFA in Film from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where she was awarded the Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Scholarship and the W.T.C. Johnson scholarship to attend. Her narrative short BIG LOT has screened at festivals nationally and was nominated for a Best Screenplay Award. She is the recipient of the Alan Landsburg Documentary Production Award for her forthcoming short documentary, METAL DAD, and winner of the Black Family Thesis Prize for her short film screenplay, BROTHER. She was recently a fellow at the NYU Production Lab Feature Film Development Studio and a winner of the 2025 Purple List Screenplay Award with her Texas-set feature script, SWEETWATER. As an editor, Cassidy has worked for The New York Times and for independent documentary filmmakers. Cassidy obtained a BFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design, with a minor in Creative Writing. Her photographs have appeared in Phaidon, Vice, and Radius Books, among others. While at RISD, she was awarded the Photography Departmental Award of Excellence.
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Project Type: Short Film (Fiction)
Genre: Drama
Status: Post Production. Aiming for Fall 2026 Premiere.
Production Country: USA
Production Company: Citrine Productions
Language: English
Writer / Director: Cassidy Batiz
Producers: Devin Carey, Natalie Remplakowski & Nicole McMinn
Key Cast: Hope January, Sam Huntsman, Vance Barton, Kelsey Landon.
Logline: On a family road trip, nine-year-old Sadie discovers the signs of her brother’s codeine addiction and endeavors to save him from his predetermined fate.
DEVIN CAREY | Producer (she/her)
Devin is a New York based producer currently pursuing her MFA in Film Producing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, having earned her MBA from the Stern School of Business in 2025 through the university’s dual degree program. She is the 2025 recipient of the Media Services Award for excellence in Producing and currently serves as a Creative Development Fellow at NYU’s Production Lab. Her film, HEN PARTY, was awarded in the categories of producing, acting and production design at The First Run Film Festival. Prior to graduate school, Devin enjoyed a successful career in advertising where she produced global campaigns for fashion and beauty clients. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Southern California.
NATALIE REMPLAKOWSKI | Producer (she/her)
Natalie is a Polish-Canadian filmmaker and producer whose company, Citrine Productions, champions bold, auteur-driven storytelling with international reach. Her approach blends creative incubation with entrepreneurial execution, partnering closely with vision-led storytellers to develop and realize distinctive projects from development through release. In 2026, Citrine Productions will premiere the feature film, Seahorse, at SXSW in the Narrative Feature Competition. The film marks the debut feature of writer, director, and star Aisha Evelyna, and was produced with the support of Telefilm Canada’s Talent to Watch program. Seahorse also stars Ruth Goodwin, Brett Donahue, and Joseph Marcell (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air). A graduate of NYU Tisch’s Graduate Film Program, Natalie has produced award-winning work recognized by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television and has been a producer on films that have been showcased at leading international festivals including Cannes, Venice, TIFF, Sundance, and the New York Film Festival among others. Prior to NYU, Natalie worked as an Associate Producer at Scythia Films in Toronto under producer Daniel Bekerman (The Apprentice). She holds a BFA with Honours in Acting from York University.
NICHOLE MCMINN | Producer (she/her)
Nichole is a New York based filmmaker originally from the rural Appalachias of East Tennessee. She is a graduate film candidate at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and is currently working on her thesis. Before grad school, she worked professionally as a prop master, art director, and production designer. She art directed critically acclaimed films such as Jane Schoenbrun’s “We’re All Going To The World’s Fair” and Raven Jackson’s “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt”. Since her time at NYU, Nichole has won the Black Family Prize for her screenplay "Fire On The Mountain, Chicken F’r Dinner", which is currently in post production. Her documentary short “Keepsake”, about a crematorium in East Tennessee, premiered at DOC NYC in 2024 and New Orleans Film Festival in 2025.
Project Goals:
We are seeking to raise approximately $25,000 USD to stabilize the project financially and bring Brother through completion, festival submission, and initial distribution. These funds will be used to recoup a portion of production expenses currently carried on personal credit cards, finance post-production and finishing, and support festival distribution and launch costs. Fiscal sponsorship will allow us to receive tax-deductible contributions and access a wider pool of supporters as we move the project toward completion.
The film has completed principal photography and is now entering a structured and accelerated post-production phase, with all key creative collaborators confirmed. We are thrilled to share that acclaimed editor Simone Smith (Mile End Kicks, Firecrackers, I Like Movies) has officially joined the project and will lead the editorial process through delivery of a final festival screener.
Post-production will begin with an assembly cut targeting an estimated eighteen-minute runtime, to be delivered by mid-December 2025. In the New Year, the project will move into its main editorial phase, with a rough cut scheduled for January 5–16, 2026, followed by a fine cut from January 19–February 6, 2026. During this stage, the film will be shared with a curated group of trusted mentors and select test audiences to gather targeted feedback. This feedback will inform final creative adjustments while maintaining a cohesive editorial vision, leading to picture lock on February 9, 2026.
Immediately following picture lock, the film will move into finishing. A three-week music process will begin with spotting and composition, followed by sound design and mixing. In parallel, a freelance VFX artist will complete a small number of key shots, including Game Boy screen replacements and minor corrective work, within a dedicated two-week VFX window. As sound and VFX are underway, the team will finalize main title assets and end credits in preparation for the online edit. The color grade will take place over two weeks, after which all picture and audio elements will be conformed and packaged to meet final delivery specifications.
Running alongside the final stages of post-production, we will complete the project’s festival-facing materials, including poster design, marketing stills, and a full electronic press kit with synopsis, director’s statement, and key cast and crew bios. This process will culminate in the delivery of a festival-ready screener and complete submission package.
The project is being prepared for submission to the Toronto International Film Festival, with a deadline of May 10, 2026, as well as to Sundance and SXSW. If accepted into TIFF or the New York Film Festival, the film would celebrate its world premiere in Fall 2026. If selected for Sundance or SXSW, the premiere would take place in early 2027, followed by a strategic festival run.
Beyond the completion of Brother, our long-term goal is to position the film as a meaningful career accelerator for its majority women-led creative team, particularly writer-director Cassidy Batiz. The film is intended to function as a proof-of-voice and proof-of-execution project, supporting Cassidy’s transition into feature filmmaking and building momentum toward the financing and production of her debut feature, Sweetwater. More broadly, Brother is part of an ongoing effort to build sustainable creative pathways for women and gender-marginalized filmmakers whose work is already artistically accomplished but too often constrained by limited access to capital. Fiscal sponsorship is essential not only to finishing the film, but to ensuring it reaches audiences, industry decision-makers, and future funders in a way that creates lasting impact.
Director’s Statement:
BROTHER follows a nine-year-old girl named Sadie as she comes to discover her brother’s addiction on a family road trip. I wrote this film because I’m interested in how kids make sense of a loved one’s struggle, and the innocent, and oftentimes, improbable belief that they can save someone from it. At the same time that this film explores that hope, it also explores how a family’s hardship sometimes exists in the periphery, just past a home video’s camera frame.
I grew up taking family road trips from Texas to New Mexico. I can still remember the hours I spent as a kid, staring out the car window, watching as the Texas flat plains slowly gave way to the desert—and how the bright sunlight would shift into a soft-pink horizon. I’ve chosen this landscape because, in the vastness of a desert, there’s often nowhere else to look but at those around you. It’s in this open space that Sadie’s family is forced to confront Colton’s struggle and see the truth of what he’s navigating.
As a filmmaker, I’m interested in examining the defining moments in someone’s life—sometimes, moments of crisis—told through an innocent gaze. BROTHER lives in all the little details that make up a nine-year-old’s perspective. We see the world through Sadie’s youthful lens—a perspective that focuses on Colton as a person rather than limiting him to what he’s navigating.
At the end of the film, Sadie tries to save her brother without understanding the implications of her choice. I wanted Sadie to make a complicated decision because sometimes hope has baggage. They say that when someone you love struggles with addiction, you need to accept that they may never change. I believe that’s true, but BROTHER touches on a different truth: a little sister who wants to bring her brother home.
- Cassidy Batiz, Writer / Director of Brother