There’s a sure ballad that carries over when coping with a shared trauma: It’s a resonance that solely those that are attuned to woe can perceive. Within the highly-anticipated movie “Charliebird,” that tune is amplified to a quantity that little question shall be heard by audiences in all places.
“Charliebird” stars Samantha Sensible (who additionally wrote the script) as a music therapist at a youngsters’s hospital. Throughout her shift, she is assigned to work with one affected person whose story triggers her personal previous. The movie may have its world premiere on the Tribeca Movie Pageant within the narrative competitors part. This Libby Ewing‘s directorial function debut.
The official synopsis reads: “Working as a music therapist at a youngsters’s hospital in Texas, Alyse aka Al (Sensible) is deeply dedicated to her sufferers and has a rebellious spirit. She’s masking her wrestle to face a violent, previous trauma. Her world is challenged when Charlie, a resistant 17-year-old affected person, is assigned to her. Not like her different children, Charlie has little interest in working with Al. She doesn’t belief her at first, however there’s something about Charlie that reminds Al of her previous and he or she is drawn to her, decided to interrupt via. Their sisterly bond grows with an surprising drive. As skilled strains blur, Al strikes via her previous, as Charlie confronts her unknown future.” Gabriela Ochoa Perez, Jeffrey Grover, Gabe Fazio, and Maria Peyramaure co-star.
“Charliebird” is produced by Ewing, Sensible, and Elliot Gipson. The movie was developed in Ewing’s feminine writers collective, which she began in 2020. Sensible instructed IndieWire that the script originated after the lack of her father. “As soon as the characters turned clear to me, they form of steered the script- as woo as that sounds. In that method, I don’t really feel like I wrote it: I really feel like I listened and typed,” she mentioned.
After then after director Ewing’s personal father abruptly handed away in 2023, she knew that it might be cathartic and therapeutic for them each to carry the story of “Charliebird” to the display.
“It was a life altering expertise,” Ewing instructed IndieWire of creating the movie. “Sam and I had been engaged on ‘Charliebird’ for some time at that time and the one factor that made sense to me [after losing my dad] was to make this movie. Funding was an extended, oftentimes discouraging journey and finally we have been capable of fund our movie due to people who have been touched by this story. Our beloved group, together with League Metropolis, San Leon, Dickinson Excessive Faculty, and The Houston Movie Fee, have been large sources for us. We stored manufacturing as small as we may with out dropping the integrity of the story. If there have been monetary limitations, that’s the place the artistic drawback fixing pushed me and the crew into making daring and significant, story pushed selections. Sam and I have been relentless in our mission and I’m satisfied making a film is a miracle.”
Ewing added that it was “serendipitous” to be at Tribeca 2025, particularly throughout a yr the place the pageant program has a robust music theme with debuts of Billy Joel’s “And So It Goes” documentary and Miley Cyrus’ personal directorial debut, “One thing Stunning.”
“Everyone knows that music is transcendent and transformative; it has the ability to heal,” Ewing mentioned. “My hope is that ‘Charliebird’ highlights how important the work of music therapists and inventive arts therapists are as a part of the therapeutic journey. These people are dedicating themselves to not solely offering an outlet for sufferers, however in lots of circumstances, helping sufferers and their households throughout the strategy of end-of-life care. These packages are sometimes the primary to lose funding and I hope to rally our audiences’ help across the worth this supplies for our failing healthcare system.”
Ewing and Sensible are set to reunite on one other music-centric movie, titled “September.” The function is a love story set in Paris.
“Charliebird” premieres at Tribeca as a gross sales title from Circus Highway Movies. Try the primary look clip under.