We're halfway to our minimum raise for SAINT MARY! Thank you and — a special invitation ✨
Dear Patron Saints –
This is our inaugural update for our wonderful funders and in-kind gifters who have contributed to SAINT MARY. Because of you, in just under two weeks, we have raised over $14,000 of our $30,000 production goal (reflecting a couple of generous outside gifts not shown on Fractured Atlas) — almost halfway there!
If we can match pace with these first two weeks, we can make it, and YOU are the angels who've given us that confidence and that gift. Speaking of gifts, in these two weeks we've also:
- Secured our primary location for the film (through the generosity of our dear friend Sarah Vitti, whose home we'll be shooting in)
- Held chemistry reads and will soon be announcing cast (with special thanks to Thea Brooks who brought some amazing actors into our field of view)
- Continued to crew up — attaching Assistant Director Dylan Blue and Intimacy Coordinator Erica Gould, alongside DP Cody Blevins, Director Erin Germaine Mahoney and Producers Kristin Krall and Michaela Morton
- Brought on three new producers — all incredible female filmmakers in their own right: Associate Producers Bonnie Calvin and Michelle Draper, and Executive Producer Danielle Lurie
AND
- Finalized our lineup for The Garden Krall Unplugged: An Evening in Support of Saint Mary & Indie Film — which you're all invited to, this Friday March 20th at Rossi's in Brooklyn. The minimum suggested ticket donation is $25, with all proceeds going directly to production of SAINT MARY; we'll have acoustic music, comedy, storytelling, raffles, film teasers, and more.
Our sights are set on shooting by Easter weekend, less than three weeks away,and we need another $12,000 to reach our $25,000 minimum to go to set — which could mean bringing on just two more outside EPs and two more APs who have a spark with this story and believe in its long-term potential as a series, or could mean drawing in a wide net of small contributions.
So our biggest ask is: if you have any friends you think would like to know about this project, and contribute to it becoming a reality, please send them to tinyurl.com/saintmaryfilm and bring them to the Garden Krall — and if this project resonates, encourage them to give! It's tax season, and all donations made through Fractured Atlas are deductible.
Our bold foray with this world and story is just beginning and we're so grateful to you for being patron saints and angels of this project. So much love and gratitude!
SAINT MARY is a psychological shortabout a celibate Christian woman who impulsively propositions a stranger in Central Park — catalyzing a sexual and spiritual reckoning.
Written, directed by, and starring Erin Germaine Mahoney, SAINT MARY is inspired by true stories of late bloomers, spiritual sensualists, and women tangling with their deepest — and often, their most conflicting — desires. The film will be both a stand-alone project for film festivals as well as proof of concept for a television series (imagine an exvangelical Fleabag).
SAINT MARY was sparked by writer/director Erin's personal story of navigating sexuality after spending the first decade of her adulthood committed to Christian celibacy.
It's a deeply personal project, inspired by the confusion and dysphoria of leaving purity culture and navigating the reality — the risky, erotic, destabilizing and conflicting reality – of sexual exploration in your 30s, and of trying on new identities before they're fully formed.
SAINT MARY : A FILM BY ERIN GERMAINE MAHONEY
SAINT MARY SAINT MARY SAINT MARY
is spiritual. is erotic. is troubling.
SAINT MARY is a coming-of-age-a-little-late story about the messiness of doing what we think we want to do. It's about taking risks, sometimes extreme ones, in the process of change. It's about sexuality and spirituality; about danger and desire; about bewilderment and becoming; about encountering a stranger, and about being strange to yourself. It's about how imagination meets reality on the path to liberation.
While in development at the Actors Gym NY with Bobby Moresco (Co-Writer of Crash and Million Dollar Baby), where both Erin and our Creative Producer Michaela Morton are writing/acting members, we've seen how the script has resonated.
We are excited to make SAINT MARY with an incredible team, including the brilliant Kristin Krall as EP/Line Producer (Netflix, HBO, Universal TV/CBS, incl. FBI Most Wanted, The Punisher) and the visionary Cody Blevins of Omnipolitan Films as DP (The Fall of Diddy, Taste the Nation) .
We’ll be shooting SAINT MARY over three days in late winter/early spring in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Our baseline budget of $30,000 comprises pay for cast and crew, equipment, insurance, craft services, logistics — all the nitty gritty – and our partnership with Fractured Atlas makes all donations tax-deductible!
We're doing our fundraising in a tight timeframe, targeting our shoot for last weekend of March. With this timeline, the fundraiser will stay live through production to give ample opportunity for folks to support the project as it evolves – and as the movie-making gods give us their own take on timing — but our intention is to raise our baseline budget by mid-March.
Funds raised beyond $30,000 will allow us to fully account for post-production, editorial, and festival submissions, alongside fair wages for cast and crew.
You can follow along on IG at @saintmaryfilm, where we'll be posting more about the project, including teasers, BTS, deeper dives into themes, tone, world, interviews with cast and creative, and invitations to special events with conversations on sexuality, spirituality, and creativity — and of course you can make your tax-deductible donation to the project here! We are so grateful for every gift.
