Some dream of escape. She learned how to fly.

FROM DARKNESS TO ORBIT

Help us finish the film.

Marta Barreto was trafficked by her own family as a child. When she told them what was happening, they said it was her fault.

By thirteen she had found drugs. By her twenties she was in prison.

By 2022 she was building rocket engines.

From Darkness to Orbit is a short documentary about the road between those facts and about a woman who was never supposed to make it out.

Marta's story sits at an intersection most films never touch. Childhood sex trafficking that led to addiction. Addiction that led to the crimes she committed to feed it. And a courtroom that handed down twenty-four and a half years without ever asking what had put her there.

She served two, released under California's Prop 57. She went into therapy. She went back to school.

None of that was a straight line. She had gotten clean before and lost it, more than once, because you cannot outrun what you have not healed. What changed this time is that she stopped running and did the work, and every time the darkness came back for her, she came back further than it did.

She kept going until the record was undeniable: an Associate's degree in manufacturing technology, then a Bachelor's in technical education, then a Master's in business administration. Three degrees, earned in sequence, while rebuilding a life from nothing.

And through a fellowship with The Ladies of Hope Ministries, she landed a job most people with her record never get near: a spot on the propulsion team at Virgin Orbit. The little girl who used to lie in the dark listening for airplanes because they were the only thing that felt safe grew up to build the machines that go to space.

Then Virgin Orbit collapsed, and she lost everything she had built.

What Marta did next is the heart of this film. She had her convictions expunged under California's Clean Slate Law. And she began walking into prisons to speak to the men incarcerated for the very crimes she survived because she believes someone has to break the cycle, and she is one of the few people willing to walk into that room and try.

Who this film is for

Survivors who have never seen their experience on screen without it being sensationalized. Formerly incarcerated people who have been told their record is who they are. Employers and institutions who talk about second chances but have never seen what one actually looks like when it works. And anyone who has ever been written off and knows exactly how that feels.

What we need

The film is shot and edited. It is in post-production now.

We are raising $8,000 to finish it.

Those funds cover the original score, the animation used to tell the childhood sequences without ever depicting the abuse, the final sound mix, and delivery. Every dollar goes directly into the film.

Watch the trailer: https://vimeo.com/1222195437?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

Give what you can. Share it if you can't.

Directed/Produced by Starling Thomas

DP / Editor: Maurice Sanford

Executive Producer: The Ladies of Hope Ministries & Soulture Media