Just Shy of Being

Director: Derek Elz

Co-Director: Bradley Hodge

Written by: Derek Elz

Story by: Derek Elz, Brad Hodge, Chad Bockholdt

Produced by: Cheryl Lawler, Mary Goodrich

Starring: Chad Bockholdt, Jason Evans, Annie Zahn, Justin Razavi

An Official Selection of the 2009 St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase

Just Shy of Being is seen through the eyes of young lovers, Arielle and Rafi, Jew and Muslim. What would be a simple love story in much of the world is, in the Middle East, also a war story. We catch an intimate glimpse of the tragic effects the conflict between ideologies has on the lives of ordinary individuals. The film weaves together the experiences of fictional and non-fictional couples engaged in inter-faith relationships in Israel and across the world, where they confront deep social and political biases just to exist as lovers and family. The couples are acutely aware of the menacing extremes that threaten them at every turn, simply because they are Jews and Muslims, and in love. 'Just Shy of Being' is a film about life lived fully and love expressed deeply, amidst a brutal world.

Mosquito Kingdom

Directed by: Brad Hodge & Derek Elz

Written by: Jed Ayres

Director of Photography: Derek Elz

Produced by: Cheryl Lawler and Natalie Black

Featuring: Chad Bockholdt, Kim Johnson, Alexis Marsden, Dick Pointer, Simon Duffy, Jaxon Stanford, Sean Spruille, and many other talented cast and crew.

"Mosquito Kingdom floored me. A crank-fueled trip into the netherworld and the jaws of the beast: it's guerilla film making at it's most heroic and f@!#d up." Scott Phillips (writer of The Ice Harvest)

Ash is a crook, but who isn't in Mosquito Kingdom? They think he's a feckless jerk stuck on a tight rope. Either way, it's his time. Passion, vengeance, it's all inevitable in Mosquito Kingdom.

Mosquito Kingdom is a digital noir film shot on location in St. Louis and the Florida Keys. Ash, our "hero", is a crook who makes his living off the suffering of others, a small hungry fish in the inky underbelly of St. Louis. But Ash is useful; he is a tool, seduced by a sinister world of depravity, envy and avarice. Ash is a pawn who is certain he's a king in the making. He encounters Melanie, a trophy wife whom everyone wants, yet she only wants for herself. Melanie, like many in Mosquito Kingdom, has her vices. And if you have a vice, Woodrell owns a piece of it and you. He owns Annie, a prostitute whose threadbare soul is weary of toiling on the streets, desperate to find a way out of the vacuum. Woodrell is also tangled in a bloody fistfight with the other greedy Powers That Be. Hampton, one of the authorities who grease their palms with ill-gotten gains, is also Melanie's husband.

When Ash leaves town to avoid the heat and an ugly conflict with Hampton, he also breaks off the last half of his conscience, sliding deeper into the seedier side of human emotion. On a forced vacation to Woodrell's paradise, Ash learns that nothing is free or what it was proclaimed to be. In Mosquito Kingdom, duplicity seeps from the heart of the bedraggled landscape clotting the veins of the people who are sent there. As the boat sinks, everyone in Mosquito Kingdom thinks they can save their own skin. If not, why not take someone down with you. Liars, thieves and murderers; that is "Mosquito Kingdom." Pay for your own sins.

Untitled Israeli Project

Directed by: Brad Hodge & Derek Elz

Director of Photography: Derek Elz

Produced by Cheryl Lawler

Featuring Jason Evans, Annie Zahn, Chad Bockholdt and Justin Razavi.

Treading respectfully through fervent states of mind, stretching across the embattled canvas of Israel, and into the United States. The latest Film Neshui project offers a positive angle on the bitter clash of cultures between Israel and the Muslim world. Seen through the unassuming eyes of youth, our story follows a Romeo and Juliet-esque pair of teenagers who identify themselves as Jew and Arab but also as human beings. They thrill in the simple life pleasures of surfing in the sea, laughing, and finding love for the first time. As the pendulum rocks back, they also find out the cost of what it takes to be involved with a forbidden partner in a society where barriers and bullets are more common than handshakes.

Our story follows this fictional narrative yet also intertwines real interfaith couples who confront life and death issues for the sake of love. The film reveals the enigmatic cultures and the small stories of individual human beings, small victories and dramatic setbacks. Life, death, love, hate, violence and peace revolve together in a dance that follows lessons learned and lost about what it is to be human in the machinery; a volatile epic fought one heart at a time.

Film Neshui is extremely enthusiastic about this project. It is an opportunity for people to reconsider age-old lessons: that we are all the same despite significant cultural differences. By combining a fictional love story and actual couples who found common ground we hope that many people might soften their impressions on this vast and important subject. The film scratches the surface of how people coexist, in small ways. This entertaining, poignant film is being produced without judgment or heavy-handedness to allow the viewer to determine there own lasting impression.