Hi, I'm Sophie, a local Jasperite and emerging filmmaker! It’s nice to e-meet you!

I'm here to ask for your help to finish something that my team and I have poured more than a year of our lives into.

In 2025, Adriana Smith was declared brain-dead and kept on life support against her family's wishes so that her pregnancy could continue in a state that outlawed abortion. From here, we built a short film that was inspired by Adriana’s story, but which we hoped would breed outrage differently by looking at abortion rights from a unique perspective: a 9 year old girl’s perspective.

'It Is What It Is' tells it through the eyes of Andi, a headstrong, imaginative nine-year-old girl whose pregnant mother has been declared brain-dead but is being kept alive by law. Andi won't believe her mother is truly gone. She holds on to the hope that her mom is only sleeping, and she pours that hope, and her grief, into her dolls and into imagined conversations, building a version of the world that is kinder than the one she actually lives in. The film stays inside a child's attempt to hold on, and asks what it costs a family when a woman's body is no longer her own to decide over.

I made this film with my producer, Sophiya Paudel, with the enormous support of New York University Abu Dhabi, and more than 40 crew, cast and collaborators across Canada, the US, and the UAE. I wanted to tell it because these stories are almost always told about women and about laws, and almost never from inside the confusion of the child who quietly absorbs all of it. At the very end, Andi looks straight into the camera and asks us not to accept her story as simply "what it is." That look is the whole reason I need to finish this properly.

I won't pretend that it's been a smooth process though. Unexpected events like the start of the war in the Middle East and the UAE have caused immense delays and pushed us past our university's timeline. BUT instead of letting the film go unfinished, we chose to carry it the rest of the way ourselves, which means the final costs now fall on us. However, even during the summer, delays have hit our post-production team, too. Our main sound designer has needed to permanently move cities due to a family medical emergency. All that said, we just can’t let Andi's story sit half-finished.

The picture is already shot and edited. What's missing is what you feel without ever noticing it: the sound and the music. To finish it right, we're completing the final sound mix and commissioning an original score from composer Ghiya Rushidat, an accomplished composer and pianist working across Dubai, Los Angeles, and Johannesburg, who cares deeply about the subject this film confronts. She has stripped her costs to the absolute bare minimum for us because she too believes in the story, but ultimately, we still have costs that we need to help her cover.

Music is essential to building the emotional world of a film and we know that her collaboration will be the key to reinforcing the weight of Andi's world, pushing the film’s message as far as it can possibly go.

After finishing the film, we will submit it to film festivals around the world and send it to any relevant organizations to screen it. The stronger the emotional impact, the farther the film’s message will reach.

Here's exactly where your support goes:

Original music score and recording:

CAD 2,500

Final sound mix, bringing all our sound design into a finished film:

CAD 850

Even 5$ makes a difference. However, if you're considering a large donation, please feel free to reach out to me personally if you'd like to connect first!

If you can't give right now, sending this to one other person who loves film, or who cares about women's autonomy and honest storytelling, would mean the world to us.

Thank you for believing in this with us. I can't wait for you to meet Andi.

With love,

Team Soph: Sophie Pfisterer and Sophiya Paudel

WATCH TRAILER HERE (Music not done)