Writer, Director, Producer Emilie Upczak
Set in a near-future Southwest ravaged by water and power shortages, Emery, a botanist from Navajo Nation, joins two developers on a perilous river expedition, in the Grand Canyon, who are seeking tribal approval for a controversial dam project. As suspicions grow, mounting tensions and the unpredictability of the river threaten their survival.
The Film Collaborative (TFC) is our 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscal sponsor, which allows for donations to be tax-deductible.
For more information:
https://www.thefilmcollaborative.org/fiscalsponsorship/projects/
Life Without End is currently in late-stage development. Writer/director Emilie Upczak has worked with script consultant Vickie Curtis to refine the screenplay and participated in the 2025 Stowe Narrative Story Lab.
Our team is also working with casting director Emily Schweber, who specializes in independent film casting.
Production in the Grand Canyon will begin Spring 2027, with logistics and permitting coordinated by local partner and field producer, Harlan Taney. As owner and operator of 4 Corner Film Logistics, Harlan has managed productions for National Geographic, NBC, and the BBC. He has created a niche in the Outdoor/Adventure film industry by developing innovative solutions for film projects in one of the world’s most remote locations.
As the Colorado River approaches irreversible thresholds—its flow projected to decline up to 50% by century’s end—the time to shift hearts, minds, and policies is now. For this reason, Life Without End will be released alongside an impact campaign rooted in a Theory of Change: storytelling, understanding, empowerment, and collective action.
Impact Producer Gina Papabeis and Producer Christi Cooper are developing the impact campaign to amplify the screenings and reach a wide viewership. This campaign will launch alongside the film and focus on water justice, in partnership with nonprofit organizations working to protect the Colorado River.
Short Film
10’ / 2022 / US / Drama
English & Navajo with English Subtitles
A botanist grieving the death of a beloved aunt, travels alone to northern Mexico, where she is nourished by images of the last trip they took together traversing the Colorado River.
Writer, Director, Producer Emilie Upczak
Support Provided by the Walton Family Foundation, Puffin Foundation, Illinois Arts Council, New Mexico Film Office, Center for Humanities & the Arts, CU Boulder, Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies, CU Boulder, SAGindie and Helix Collective Music Connect, Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Partners include the Sonoran Institute, Lo-Fi Productions LLC, Full Spectrum Features, Redline Contemporary Art Center, Flashpoint Chicago, a campus of Columbia College Hollywood, Mimesis Center for Documentary and Ethnographic Media, CU Boulder, Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts, CU Boulder.
Filmed on Location in the State of New Mexico
Photo credit: Laura Conway
Documentary Short
20’ / 2026 / US /
Co-Directed Emilie Upczak & Eric Coombs Esmail
This film delves into fraught interactions between residents of a small mountain community and a relocated mountain lion, which is believed to have killed at least 15 pet dogs over a span of 30 days. As residents react with fear and anger, they construct narratives around these encounters, creating a social climate that leads to tragic consequences. The film raises vital questions about animal ownership, humanity's role in shaping the natural world, and the existential vulnerability of nonhuman animals.
Photo credit: Fernando Boza
Digital Exhibition
The Rare and Distinctive Collections at the University of Colorado, Boulder, was gifted Ann Roy’s collection of work in 2012. The materials within the collection cover Roy’s life as a girl in Tulsa, Oklahoma; as the wife of an historian writing about Ute Territory; as an expatriate living in Mexico and raising two sons; as an instructor at Ivan Illich's center in Cuernavaca, and as a feminist working to bridge the cultures of Mexico and the United States.
Through a Fellowship from the Center for Humanities and the Arts and the Center for Research Data and Digital Scholarship, and a grant from the President’s Fund, Emilie created an open-source Digital Exhibit, geared towards artists, academics, and general audiences.
Narrative Feature
72’ / 2017 / T&T, US/ Drama
English & Mandarin with English Subtitles
After the death of her father, Zhenzhen is smuggled to the Caribbean island where her brother, Wei, works in construction. Wei gets her a job at a restaurant, but when the smuggler demands more cash, Zhenzhen is forced into a compromising position. Help comes unexpectedly from Evelyn, who runs an art gallery in the neighborhood—but the contrast between the dark rooms above the restaurant and the blindingly white gallery calls everyone’s innocence into question.
Writer, Director, Producer Emilie Upczak
Available on Amazon
IMDB
With a knack for storytelling, director Emilie Upczak has effectively employed an ever-consequential female gaze to look into the subject matter; and in the process, while dissecting the system of sex trade, she succinctly puts her point of view as a strong undercurrent of the narrative.
Manoj Barpujari --fipresci
Night Lights Denver is a collection of light and projection-based art installations throughout Downtown Denver.
Winterscape offers a contemplative view of the Colorado mountains, combining 16mm footage of winter forests with superimposed wildlife imagery. Residing in Nederland, the artist regularly records the animals that inhabit their shared mountainous environment.
A meditation on the Colorado River corridor through the Grand Canyon. These moving images were collected over the course of a 10-day white water rafting trip in June 2023. Only 1% of the 5 million people who visit the Grand Canyon each year go below the rim. The installation invites the viewer to experience spaces along the Colorado River that are rarely seen, inaccessible by road or plane.
A film that explores human industry, expansion, boundaries, public and private land, wildlife, and wildlife corridors in the west. The film visually explores the tensions inherent in the intersection of the natural world and human industrial endeavor. Made with visual artist, Nicholas Emery.
This film explores human industry, expansion, boundaries, public and private land, wildlife, and wildlife corridors in the west.
The idea originated as paintings by Nicholas Emery, which articulate contemporary urban realities that are themselves the legacy of historical industrial decisions that began in the late 1800’s in the west. In these paintings oil refineries, power lines, railroad lines, buildings, and barbed wire are juxtaposed with vast sprawling prairies, buffalo, elk, and wolves, that causes a dualistic tension.
Emery began collaborating with filmmaker Emilie Upczak, who herself was making experimental shorts, and asking questions about identity and the land.
Together they work to visually explore the tensions inherent in the intersection of the natural world and human industrial endeavor.
Sound Design by Leland Burchmore
Funded by INSITE, an initiative of RedLine Contemporary Art Center and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Partners include the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge and the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts.
A Super 8 film collaboration between Nicholas Emery and Emilie Upczak that explores the industrial sector of Denver and the wild spaces of Rocky Mountain Arsenal.
Public projection onto a container for the AXIS pop-up event, Globeville River Arts Center, Denver, 2018.
Francesa Woodman, 1976
The city streets of Port of Spain, and its varied cast of characters are the backdrop for this spoofy Trini-style-neo-noir. Philo, an expat detective turns to his previous partner Monique for help in solving a current high profile kidnapping case. But where this leads them is to the past, and an old rift between them regarding the disappearance of her brother, which Philo seeks to mend.
Project Director for Caribbean Film Database (CFDb) – the largest single source of information on films produced in and about the Caribbean, defined here as the insular Caribbean plus Belize, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. As of its launch in September 2015, the CFDb houses information on more than 900 films from the English, Dutch, French and Spanish-speaking Caribbean. The project was initially supported by the ACP Cultures+ Programme, funded by the European Union.
Review of the film “Eat, for This Is My Body”, directed by Michelange Quay. Written for the CRB: Caribbean Review of Books. 2008.
Filmmaker Magazine
by Dan Mirvish and Emilie Upczak in Festivals & Events on Mar 4, 2019
This documentary short “wining” as a dance language with a history and identity born out of the Caribbean experience. In particular, it looks at the body in motion as well as elements of Trinidadian society that are represented in the way people dance and the various ethnic influences on the dance itself.
Dancing Deities is a documentary short that explores the music, dance and mythology of a rural Orisha community in Trinidad and Tobago.
