A few weeks ago I did something that, as a woman who grew up in the early 2000’s, I was mildly terrified to do. I drove across Atlanta to meet a stranger I found on the internet.
Not a random stranger though. A filmmaker one. Who I found by doing what I do when I’m supposed to be doing something else, which is reading things I wasn’t looking for. I had been following the NonDë 50 Films Project over at FilmStack Daily Digest, where Courtney Romano has been building what I can only describe as a living archive of indie films being made outside the Hollywood system. I was scrolling through the list of projects and filmmakers when I noticed something. Out of every name on that list, exactly one was based in Atlanta.
So I did what any reasonable person does when they find out there is someone in their area doing the same thing they are. I messaged him.
A few exchanges and a couple of texts later, we had a time and a place. And yes, as I was driving over, the part of my brain that has watched too many true crime documentaries was very much present. But I went anyway. And I am here to report that I survived, but more importantly, that the conversation we had is one I keep turning over in my head because it spoke to me something so true about where indie film is right now.
The filmmaker is Jeff Phungglan. His Substack is called The Phuket List and it is a front-row seat to what it actually looks like to make a NonDë film from the ground up. His feature is called Mei I (as in “AI”) and it is a near future sci-fi about about a Thai-American woman searching for her missing brother in a system determined to replace her.
That is a story that could not have been greenlit by a committee. It could not have been produced by a studio trying to appeal to everyone simultaneously. It is urgent and specific and uncomfortable and it is being made by a filmmaker who is pouring his actual worldview into it on a shoestring budget in Atlanta, Georgia. That is Non-Dē and that is the underground movement that is happening right now.
Which brings me to what we actually spent most of our time talking about.
I asked Jeff about the pronunciation and he told me it’s “non-dee” like “indie” but non in front. Non-Dē is about non-dependence. Getting back to what independent filmmaking was actually supposed to be before the indie film world started mimicking the Hollywood system it was supposed to be an alternative to.
Jeff put it in a way that I have not been able to stop thinking about since we sat down. He said that if you’re hearing about a project for the first time from a trade publication, it’s probably not Non-Dē. Whether the story required the machine to exist, or whether it would have gotten made regardless because the person making it had something they needed to say.
That distinction matters a lot right now and I’ll get to why in a minute.
One of the things that came up in our conversation was the emotional layer of making an indie film. Jeff is building his Substack around this exact observation. He writes about what it’s like to be a human being trying to make a film while also being a parent, a partner, a person with a life that keeps happening whether or not the edit is done. He said something like everyone talks about what it takes to make the thing. Nobody talks about what it’s like to live while you’re making it.
That landed for me because it’s so true. There’s a version of the indie filmmaking conversation that stays very surface level. The gear, the grants, the festival circuit. And then there’s the version that acknowledges that most of the filmmakers I know personally have a project sitting in some part of the pipeline waiting to be finished, writing, pre-production, post, because life got in the way. A death in the family. A health crisis. A day job that bled into every night. And then the stall becomes a shame, and the shame makes it harder to go back, and suddenly two - three - five years have passed.
The level of shame that drags you down every time you think about that incredible story you want to tell but haven’t yet is so heavy.
You.
Are not.
Alone.
That story hasn't let you be because it's not finished with you yet. It's never too late to get it to the finish line.
The Non-Dē 50 Films Project exists. Courtney Romano is tracking over 125 filmmakers making projects that don’t need Hollywood to exist. Jeff Phungglan and myself Shawna Carroll are in Atlanta making films that no studio would have touched. I found him on a list. And we had coffee for an hour and a half and talked about the industry, and our projects, and how Atlanta has more filmmakers like us than most people realize, all of us just separately figuring it out.
Something is shifting. The infrastructure of the Non-Dē movement is being built in real time. There is a venue list for tour screenings. There are collaborative marketing campaigns. There are filmmakers writing about their process, building audiences before their films are finished, treating the making of the thing as part of the story itself.
This is not a fringe moment. This is what the beginning of something in an underground movement looks. This is where art is formed. that the studios will later try and find a way to capitalize on it.
But here is the thing I keep coming back to, and it’s the same thing I said in this article about why now is the best time to get your film finished, and I will keep saying it until I am blue in the face: none of this matters for your film if you don’t finish it.
This Non-Dē window is real. The audience appetite for stories that feel human and specific and unmistakably made by a person is real. I have seen it. I watched it happen at SXSW earlier this year. I’m currently watching it this week at the Atlanta Film Festival. But the window belongs to the films that exist. Not the ones stuck.
IDIOTS - shot and posted right here in Atlanta, premiered at Sundance, then screened at SXSW and is now at ATLFF.
Produced byAtlanta native - Alex Orr.
Directed by Mason Blair.
Post by Moonshine Post - Drew Sawyer + JP.
Jeff’s feature Mei I shoots in June. He is in pre-production right now, navigating the planning phase the way most Non-Dē filmmakers do, figuring it out as he goes, reaching out to people when he needs them, making it work. And honestly? That is the most punk rock Non-Dē thing I can think of. Not because the uncertainty is romantic, but because he is doing it anyway.
That is what this movement actually is. It’s not a manifesto or a trend. It’s filmmakers in their own towns and cities building toward telling a story on their own terms outside of the Hollywood system, it’s a Substack writer tracking 125 projects at once, it’s two strangers who found each other on a list and had coffee for an hour and a half and left feeling less alone.
Something is shifting. Your film matters. Now is the moment go make it happen.
I’m always here to talk notes from post.
Until next time,
Shawna Carroll
PS: You can read my past article about why now is the time to get your film to the finish line below.
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