Ten-year-old Lee has gone to church with his family every Sunday for as long as he can remember. His world is simple and good: weekends at the arcade with his Uncle Isaac, icees on the walk home, and afternoons on the boardwalk folding paper planes, chasing longer and longer flights.
Uncle Isaac teaching Lee to fold, on the waterfront where the story begins. Concept imagery — Paper Planes shoots in New York this November.
Then Isaac is robbed at a gas station and beaten into a coma. Lee's family gathers at the hospital. They pray. They wait. And one evening, while his mother cooks dinner, Lee finds the verse in her Bible where God claims to create evil.
The family gathers. They pray. They wait.
Paper Planes is about the first time faith stops being enough. Why this story
Stories about faith often overlook the specific role the church plays in Black communities, as a place of refuge, identity, and belonging. This film explores what happens when that foundation is questioned from the inside, not from rebellion, but from grief. It is told entirely at a child's eye level: the camera at Lee's height, the adults partially framed and overheard. We don't explain the world; we experience the confusion with him.
Sunday morning — the world Lee is about to start questioning.
Who's making it
Written and directed by Mark Banning, whose first feature, Jellysmoke, starring Michael Ealy and Andre Royo, won top honors at the 2005 Los Angeles Film Festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. Produced by Dave Flynch, a producer and sound designer with two decades in film and an MFA candidate in Creative Producing at Columbia University School of the Arts.
What your support does
We shoot on location in New York this November. Of a $40,000 production budget, $5,000 is secured. The remaining $35,000 pays the people who make it: cast and crew, locations and permits, camera and sound, and the post-production that finishes the film, followed by festival submissions and a free community screening in New York.
Every supporter is credited on screen. Contributions are tax-deductible.
A paper plane only works when someone lets it go.
Flynch Films is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Flynch Films must be made payable to "Fractured Atlas" only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
