The last drop
WRITER & DIRECTOR: Adam Joel
GENRE: Drama/Sci-fi
FORMAT: Narrative Short
STATUS: Post Production
SYNOPSIS: A young woman and her boyfriend go on a romantic adventure through their past with a device that lets couples explore shared memories— but when their journey reveals overlooked signs of abuse, she must wake herself up to escape.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
Nobody told me what “emotional abuse” was until after I had already experienced it for four years straight. My girlfriend at the time was a very loving person, but she also manipulated me, locked me out of the house, and pressured me into ending every female friendship that I had. Hollywood movies teach us that abuse only “counts” if you see blood or bruises— but the first act of abuse is rarely violent. More than 1 in 3 women and 1 in 3 men have experienced some of emotional abuse in their lifetime, but many survivors only recognize the early signs in hindsight. While we can’t change the past, we can do so much more to support survivors and prepare the next generation of young men and women entering their first relationships right now.
The Last Drop is a short sci-fi film and national engagement campaign designed to reveal the early signs of relationship abuse by taking viewers on a journey through the memories of real survivors. The Last Drop aims to show young people what abuse looks like before it turns violent and kickstart a national conversation about relationship safety.
Writer / Director: Adam Joel is an impact-driven filmmaker. He is a co-founder of Aggressively Compassionate, a production company that creates films for nonprofits and other good causes. In his directorial debut Under the Weather, which depicted mental health as shifts in the weather— he developed his communal storytelling style to create magical realism based on real social issues. He also worked as an Impact Manager for the education film No Small Matter, where he booked 1,300+ screening events to reach advocates, educators, and legislators in all 50 states. To write The Last Drop, Adam went beyond his own experience with abuse, to incorporate dozens of stories from other survivors and experts.
Co-Producer: Sydney Bauer is a Chicagoland area native and a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She currently works full-time as the Client Success Manager with Storybolt, a company that uses documentary films to curate programming around DEI for their clients. Outside of that position, she also hosts a podcast on relationship abuse called Love is Not and freelances as a documentary filmmaker, focusing on impact campaigns. In 2018, Sydney was a Member of the Obama Foundation’s Community Leadership Corps. She's also an avid reader and podcast listener who can frequently be found at a concert venue.
Co-Producer: Max Asaf is a Chicago-based freelance documentary filmmaker. After graduating from the University of Chicago in 2016, Max served as the development coordinator at Kartemquin Films, helping raise over $5 million for the organization and its films. In the fall of 2019, Max left Kartemquin to freelance full-time, producing projects from award-winning documentary and fiction filmmakers - including as the Co-Producer on the documentary short The Sebastopol Siege and as the Co-Producer on The Last Strike, an upcoming feature documentary on the 1981 PATCO strike from Kindling Group. Max is in post-production on his feature documentary directorial debut, Within the Box, an early version of which screened at the Cannes Short Film Corner.
Director of Photography: Madelyn Momano is a cinematographer and camera operator based out of Chicago. She grew up in the Detroit area and decided to call Chicago home after graduating from Columbia College Chicago in 2017. When she’s not watering her plants she is out working on a wide range of projects - including narrative, commercial, and documentary work.