Eshana's Trial

We began principal photography in the summer of 2023, but I really started writing the script at the height of the lockdown in 2020.

The human suffering that occurred during the pandemic was made even
worse by a dramatic escalation in hate crime. I became concerned that the coded messaging of certain opinion leaders was inciting this violence and was compelled to say something about it.

In the aftermath of World War II, Maurice Ogden wrote a poem called
“The Hangman” to warn us against allowing fear to control us.
Concerned that history could be repeating itself, I felt morally obligated to remind the public about his warning, but I also wanted to leave them with a sense of agency and hope.

It is about a malevolent authority figure who sows fear and confusion to subjugate the people of a small town while he systematically murders
them.

The protagonist of Ogden’s story is an anti-hero who ultimately reaps the consequence of his moral failings. I wanted to present audiences with a hero that they could empathize with. I also wanted her to be able to stand up to the Hangman where Ogden’s narrator failed.

My hero needed to have a very high level of emotional intelligence to be able to confront the Hangman. I thought that it would be more appropriate and believable to portray this person as a woman.

Being afraid of danger isn’t a moral failing even when that fear can be exploited to control and dominate us. Should we find ourselves in the thrall of a “Hangman”, we can regain our agency by reconnecting to our capacity for gratitude and compassion. This can be an extremely difficult thing to do, but is even possible in the aftermath of overwhelming trauma.

In the summer of 2021, a proudly multicultural community near
my home was devastated by the shocking and brutal murder of
a Pakistani family. The perpetrator of the crime, who targeted
the victims because of their appearance, had been radicalized
by the kind of coded messaging that concerned me. I wanted my
story to reflect the suffering of the survivors and honor their
emotional resilience.

Yes. I wanted the audience to see them as a loving multicultural
couple. I also wanted to open the door to exploring the complexity
of their interfaith relationship in a feature-length adaptation.

We sent out a casting call to disabled actors and corresponded with a few promising candidates. While we were unable to find a
disabled actress (who could also realistically portray the able-bodied version of the character) for this film, it is an option that we intend to revisit in a feature-length adaptation.