LOS AGELESS
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.
Los Ageless, Written & Directed by Emily Manthei| (Image for mood reference only)
HOVER OVER PHOTOS FOR TEAM BIOS AND PROJECT DESCRIPTION
EMILY MATHEI | Writer/Director/Producer (she/her)
Emily is an award-winning Berlin-based filmmaker and art director whose work explores cultural intersections and identity. A theology graduate from the University of Edinburgh, she blends art, faith, and philosophy in her storytelling. Her debut feature, Berlin Loop (2025), follows a series of acclaimed shorts, including Voice Over and Vergangenheitsbewältigung, which screened internationally.
CATHERINE GOLDSCHMIDT, ASC, BSC | DOP (she/her)
Catherine Goldschmidt is an Emmy and ASC Award–nominated cinematographer known for her work on House of the Dragon, Doctor Who, and Chloe. Named a “Rising Star of Cinematography” by American Cinematographer, she brings a bold, expressive visual style to both television and independent film. She holds an MFA from AFI and is a founding member of the illuminatrix collective of female cinematographers.
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Project Type: Live Action Feature
Genre: Magical Realism, Mystery, Dramedy
Status: Development, Fundraising
Production Country: United States, Germany
Production Company: Van Tassel LLC
Language: English
Writer/Director/Producer: Emily Manthei
Producer: Jenny Jo Stokka
Impact Producer: Farida Rafique
DOP: Catherine Goldschmidt, ASC, BSC
Logline: At the intersection of past and future, a woman with a failing memory in a desert retirement village seeks redemption for her past mistakes.
JENNY JO STOKKA | Producer (she/her)
Jenny Jo Stokka is a creative producer with a passion for international, auteur-driven cinema. Based between Europe and the U.S., she has produced films in Germany, Spain, and the U.S., including the upcoming feature Berlin Loop (Germany, 2025) and the Cannes Short Film Corner selection Pelargonía (Spain, 2025). In 2025, she started developing an environmental justice documentary feature and impact producing for the Hot Docs 2025 selection, The Longer You Bleed.
FARIDA RAFIQUE | Impact Producer (she/her)
Farida Rafique is a Los Angeles–based filmmaker and impact producer with over 15 years of experience in entertainment and human rights advocacy. Her work spans film, nonprofit, and social impact projects, including Bienvenidos a Los Ángeles (Oscar-shortlisted, Cannes Diversity Award) and Love Letters to an Addict. A SPEC-certified sustainable producer, she is dedicated to creating empathetic, socially conscious stories that build community.
Project Fundraising Goal: $500,000
We are in late development and still looking to raise funds for production and our social impact campaign. Production dates are slated for October/November 2026, with a robust impact campaign and hybrid distribution strategy to follow the film’s completion.
A donation to our project would help us share a story with the world that highlights the joys and beauty of aging, as well as the importance of intergenerational friendships. By joining our journey, you will be supporting a project that will actively fight harmful ageing stereotypes, promote care for people living with dementia, and combat the loneliness epidemic among young and old people alike.
Director’s Statement:
Many wisdom teachers have confronted the entrenched dualism we see in life: old and young, obedience and rebellion, order and chaos; but our greatest spiritual teachers have posited that there is a third way: a spiritual path that walks the line not between two ways of living or two halves of life, but including all of life.
The Joshua Tree desert embodies that for me. It’s a place where wisdom and energy from the past hang in the air like a halo. But on the surface, it’s also a brutal, dry, intense climate, where humans feel like an imposition on the landscape. A place of exile and transformation; mountain cliffs on a flat desert bed; spiky cacti on pillow-clouded skies; overwhelming dry heat on the surface, with natural hot springs underground! Bridging these distinct binaries defines my visual and creative approach. I find cross-pollinating distinct visual influences lends a spirit of playfulness and charm to topics that seem serious, like aging, memory loss, grief, and death. Using a supernatural, light-hearted, magical (spiritual) realism tone, I’d like to translate the desert and its residents’ wit and wisdom to the screen in Los Ageless.
I’m inspired by the myriad 35mm films shot in the desert, from Paris, Texas to Inland Empire to Knight of Cups to Dune, which make use of wide-angle maximalism, unusual pops of distinct color, and the sun as a spiritual entity. The color story will highlight the natural tan, brown, and muted blues of the desert with bursts of vivid, playful pink, purple, and orange. Using these strong in-camera choices, the effect will be a surreal, other-worldly visual sensibility without relying on special effects or intensive post-production elements.
I want to create a psychedelic atmosphere that blurs the line between reality and dreams, time and eternity, opening the audience to that third way, or the spiritual experience of living in kairos time, unending present. With three young characters representing two paths of dualism and one of final integration, I want to use the intense contrasts of landscape and ages to tell a story where everything belongs - life,death, and afterlife - as one is tested, forgiven, and transformed.
How to age well, and learning what makes a meaningful life, are the central questions of this film. For most of us, it takes time and the process of aging itself to begin to understand the meaning of our lives, and what really matters to us. But the ageist bias that searches for eternal youth, artificial intelligence, and transhumanist solutions to pain and dying don’t allow us to respect the very fact of aging, let alone its most positive qualities (such as a respect for the spiritual realm). To see empowered, vibrant, older characters on screen, as I’ve known in my own life and experience in our real-life Sky Valley, seems unrepresented in cinema, and media in general. And yet, we have more old people, who are all living longer, on the face of this planet than ever before.
As a filmmaker with a background in theology and journalism, I was intrigued by the older people living intentionally, and asking different, more spiritual questions: How can we love each other well? What makes a stable and sustainable community? What if the meaning of life was inside us all along? Meanwhile, both of my producers had lived through caring for an older relative with dementia, and asking these questions through the lens of pain has equally inspired their interest.
This film came from my experiences with my own grandmother, who asked these questions and, through her faith, gained a resolute stability that made her unafraid of death. As much as older people can teach us how to live, they can also teach us how to die. Those who have had near-death experiences, taken spiritual journeys into expanded consciousness, or simply have learned through the experience of grief, memory loss, confusion, and disease how to live with more love and gratitude, are the ones who need to teach us how to live. We are hoping this film, along with our impact campaign exploring these related, real-life issues, can share bits of this eternal wisdom.
~ Emily Mathei, Writer/Director/Producer Los Ageless