Five years ago I lost the only version of myself I've ever known. Building myself from nothing led me to the art of filmmaking. Now I need your help!

WHAT REMAINS

A short film about a mother, a memory, and the choice to let go

Logline:

After her son vanishes on a family hike, a mother is forced to choose: accept an unfathomable truth, or lose what remains of the life she has left.

Why I'm Making This Film

For almost twenty years, I was a full time mother and homeschool educator, home with my kids every day. My whole identity ran through that role, so completely that when my marriage of seventeen years ended, I didn't just lose a marriage. I lost the only version of myself I'd ever built. Through that loss I had to figure out, from nothing, who I was when I wasn't someone's wife or a full time mother anymore.

That's the question underneath What Remains. Not "what happens when you lose a child," although that's the story on the surface. It's "what happens when the story you've been telling yourself crumbles and it was the only thing holding you together"

The Film

Sam has never stopped searching for her son Jonah on the trail where she lost him. The film moves between two spaces that slowly bleed into each other, a family kitchen where Sam sets three plates every morning while her wife Lex tries, again and again, to have the conversation that will end their marriage, and the trail itself, where Jonah is fully present, warm, real enough that you believe in him too. Small details start traveling between the two worlds, until the line between memory and the present gives out completely. In the end Sam is holding proof she can no longer explain away.

The Vision : Why Surrealism

I don't make films that explain a character's interior state. I make films that bring the audience into the experience and let you live inside it.

Every choice in What Remains is built around the idea that what if you could see grief the way it actually feels, and not necessarily as a single emotion. What does it look and feel like visually where the past leaks into the present and memory feels as real and touchable as the physical world around us.

I studied anthropology before I studied film, and with that background I examine closely specific rituals people build to survive an unforgiving world. Surrealism, to me, isn't about spectacle, but about staying faithful to what feelings actually look like and to trust an audience enough to let them feel their way through it.

Why This, Why Now

I'm finishing my MFA in Cinema at San Francisco State University, culminating with my thesis. It's a film running about 9-10 minutes and I built it to sit alongside the movies that taught me what this genre can do: Aftersun, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Melancholia. This film is the culmination of 7 years of higher education and film school. It is my calling card for my film career. It is also especially poignant as discourse of motherhood, mental health and grief are prevalent today.

Where Your Money Goes

This is a four day shoot with an 8 person crew and a cast of 4, including two young actors for a memory sequence. If fully funded, every single person on this production, cast and crew, gets paid a living wage, as these working professionals deserve to be paid for their immense expertise.

Our Funding goals are tiered and when each tier is reached we unlock the ability to add more substance and detail to the production.

$5,000

This is our true starting minimum, first real production costs, location deposits, permit fees, and locking in our equipment rental. Hit this, and pre production is fully funded and moving. It's a deliberately modest first step, not the full picture of what the film costs.

$12,600

The real floor for the film itself: full cast and crew wages, guaranteed, for everyone on this production. Past this point, the film gets made in full, with everyone paid fairly.

$15,000

Unlocks our camera, lighting, and sound rental package.

$17,500

Unlocks lodging for the crew, catering for all four days, our location fee, and production insurance.

$20,000

Our full original production budget, includes vital post production like color grading and editing. This fully funded buget also covers platform fees.

Once we clear $5,000, we keep raising for the rest of the campaign automatically, nothing resets, and every goal we hit funds a little more of what's above.

**No sweepstakes, giveaways or promotions are offered in exchange for donations...These gifts are for the love of art!

The Team

AJ Meininger: Writer, Director

AJ Meininger is a Bay Area filmmaker and anthropologist whose work explores marginalized identities, mental health, and radical authorship of one's own story. After nearly two decades as a full time mother and homeschool educator, she rebuilt her career from nothing following the end of her marriage, channeling that experience into cinema. She is completing her MFA in Cinema at San Francisco State University, where her work has earned Best Cinematography honors, and her films have screened at the Merced Queer Film Festival, Bernal Heights Film Festival, and World Cultural Film Festival. She also co-produces the Belvedere Homemade Film Festival, an annual community celebration of new and emerging filmmakers.

The Crew What Remains is being made by a deliberately small crew, 6-9 professionals total, each covering more than one role out of care rather than corner cutting: a director of photography, a first AD who also handles script supervision and set logistics, a gaffer and grip covering lighting and rigging together, a sound recordist, a production designer/art department lead, and a hair and makeup artist. Every one of them is paid a living wage rate as is the cast. If fully funded nobody on this set works for exposure, credit or meals. Paying for labor is my top priority.

Casting is underway for our two leads, Sam and Lex, along with a young actor for Jonah. We're specifically seeking queer actors, and are especially excited to cast larger bodied performers in roles written to be carried by them fully, not built around them.

What Happens Next

We shoot this fall/winter. Once picture is locked, What Remains goes out to the same festival circuit that's platformed films like Nanny and Aftersun, festivals that take character driven, visually bold, emotionally honest work seriously, especially work from queer filmmakers telling stories with plus size and BIPOC leads at the center, not the margins.

Risks & Challenges

Independent filmmaking always comes with real logistical risk. I'd rather be upfront about ours than pretend they don't exist.

Weather and light: Several key scenes depend on true golden hour and dusk light on an outdoor trail location, which gives us a narrow window each day that we can't move. We've built our schedule around this on purpose, grouping trail scenes together and planning backup coverage into pre production, but weather is still weather. Contingency plans are a plenty!

Child Performers: Our story includes a sequence with a young child actor, which means working within California's rules for minors on set: limited hours, required breaks, a guardian present at all times. We planned our schedule conservatively around this from day one rather than treating it as an afterthought.

A tight schedule: Four days is lean for a script with this many continuity heavy visual details, a single rock that has to match itself exactly across four different scenes, a set that visibly changes day to day. We've already built a full scene by scene breakdown sheet before ever stepping on set, specifically to catch this kind of thing before it becomes a problem.

Post production timeline: Sound design carries a lot of this film's storytelling, and doing it right takes real time. If post takes longer than planned, festival submission dates may shift. We'll keep backers updated at every stage regardless.

None of this is unique to us. It's the nature of making something this ambitious on a small budget. What I can promise is that we've planned for it rather than hoped around it.

Join Us

I'm not asking you to fund a stranger's vanity project but I am asking you to help a group of independent artists and filmmakers get paid fairly to make something honest about grief, identity, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive the unbearable parts of being a person. If that's a story worth existing, I'd love to have you on this with me!

Thank you for reading this far! If you have any questions, thoughts or suggestions, I would be happy to chat about the thing I love more...Film.

AJ Meininger

FAQ

When will I receive my reward? Digital rewards (the script PDF, a thank you video, the rough cut link) go out within a few weeks of the shoot wrapping. Physical rewards, like prints and painted cairn rocks, ship once the film is in post production. We'll share production updates with backers the whole way through.

Will I be able to watch the film if I don't back a tier that includes it? What Remains will first go out on the festival circuit, which usually means it can't be posted publicly online right away. Backers at $15 and above get a private digital download as soon as the film is finished, ahead of any public release.

Is my contribution tax deductible? No. This is a direct crowdfunding campaign rather than a donation made through a fiscal sponsor or nonprofit, so contributions aren't deductible. I'm not a tax professional, so please check with one if this matters for your own filing.

Where will the film premiere? We don't know yet! That depends on which festivals accept it, but backers will hear it first, before any public announcement.

I can't contribute financially right now. How else can I help? Share share share! Sharing can help the campaign with even a few people matters more than most people realize for a project this size. Commenting on or reacting to our updates helps too, it's often what determines whether social platforms show the campaign to more people.