fiscal sponsorship
STING
TYPE: Narrative Short
GENRE: Drama
STATUS: Completed
LOGLINE
In the unforgiving night of the Bronx’s heroin epidemic, a twin seeks revenge against the street dealers he blames for his brother’s overdose.
SYNOPSIS
48 hours after his twin’s overdose, Connor has convinced an NYPD detective to back his plan for revenge. Under police surveillance, he'll assume his brother's identity to buy-and-bust the street dealers who sold the fatal dope. But after crossing the front line of the Bronx’s heroin war, he loses himself in the night, in pursuit of revenge, redemption, and reconnection to the dead.
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
In December of 2016 my writing partner, a longtime friend and confidant, died of a heroin overdose alone in his Bronx apartment. Over the following weeks, I began photographing his neighborhood to capture the places he spent his life before all trace of him disappeared.
Through this and other research, I discovered that his overdose coincided with a surge of fentanly-laced heroin in the borough. The symptoms of an epidemic were festering, and as my project expanded to other neighborhoods, characters, settings, and themes began to reveal themselves.
STING is a short film built from these experiences. It follows Connor, a twin who goes undercover to punish the dealers he blames for his brother’s fatal overdose.
STING is an opportunity to carry on in my friend’s memory, to push myself artistically in a way he would have respected, remaining loyal to aesthetics and principles we shared. As such, one major theme is something we spoke about frequently:
The drug war is a war. There are no sides, only victims on both fronts. While it’s tempting to look to aggressive policing for a solution, it does little but temporarily stanch the flow of drugs, and its violence only flays the psychic wounds of areas scarred by it for decades.
On the most personal level, STING is about grief. It may not be pretty, and things may not resolve how you had hoped, but in the end you keep the people you love alive through your actions after they're gone.
KEY CREW
Frank Graziano - Writer-Director
Frank Graziano is a New York-based writer-director and an MFA candidate in directing at Columbia University.
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic - Producer
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic is a writer-director born in Dubrovnik, Croatia . Her short Into the Blue won awards at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival, the 63rd Oberhausen Film Festival, and the 23rd Sarajevo Film Festival, among many others and was nominated for a Student Academy Award. She is currently in prepoduction for her debut feature film MURINA.
Connect With The Filmmakers:
It's tax deductible!
ACCOLADES
Help promote my fundraising campaign
Put our donation widget on your website
The Gotham Film & Media Institute is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to finding, developing and celebrating the people and projects that shape the future of story.