An Interview with Men Go To Battle Director Zachary Treitz

Writer/director Zachary Treitz and writer/actor Kate Lyn Sheil will be attending the festival for screenings of their fraternal Civil War drama, Men Go To Battle, both today and tomorrow. Read on for an interview with Treitz and be sure to check out the film.

NFF: What kind of research went in to creating the period setting? Do you feel like your film is entirely realistic to Civil War era Kentucky, or did you take any liberties in writing the script?

Zachary Treitz: We wanted to create the feeling of immersion, like we were dropped into an unfamiliar world. A large part of that meant being as specific as possible with the language, interactions, and physical environment, and the clearest path toward that was drawing upon first-person documents from the specific time and place we were capturing. So Kate and I spent our time in archives reading through unpublished diaries and letters written in 1860s Kentucky. Many of these probably had not been read since they were catalogued. We tried to use these sources to inform the tone and thought processes of the characters. We do not pretend to be historians, but we were probably much more literal and historically accurate than many period films just because we did not want to take liberties with the timeline or environment. We used the constraints and details we found in the research to bolster the narrative and create something we had not seen before. We were also working with people who take the history very seriously, and we didn't want them to cringe when they saw something anachronistic. But the idea was to create the illusion of a specific time and place. Whether its actually accurate is sort of beside the point for us.

NFF: You worked with professional re-enactors in creating some of your battle sequences. What was that like?

Treitz: Re-enactment for all of the people we worked with is a pastime. They call it the "hobby" and its one they enjoy like any other. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it. Working with them was a challenge of convincing them that we as outsiders could approach it as seriously and sincerely as they do, without being a distraction. We tried to be an asset, and even having one more soldier on the field with them (our character Henry) was appreciated because it turned out he was a good soldier. Calling it fun would belie how difficult those weekends could be, but it was in the end incredibly rewarding. It was our kind of fun.

NFF: Having undertaken an ambitious period piece for your first film, do you have the desire to do something much more contemporary for your next one?

Treitz: Yes. 1000 times yes.

Meet the Cast of The Bronze

At Sundance, where it was one of the Opening Night films, the cast and crew of The Bronze sat down for a group interview with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss the raucous comedy about an over-the-hill Olympic gymnast, co-written by and starring The Big Bang Theory's Melissa Rauch. Check out the interview below. 

An Interview with In My Father's House Directors Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg

NFF alums Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg (Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, NFF 2010) bring their deeply empathetic and insightful storytelling to a different kind of subject with In My Father's House. Che "Rhymefest" Smith, the Grammy-winning rapper and writer behind Kanye West's "Jesus Walks" and the Oscar-winning "Glory," buys the Chicago home of his estranged father whom he hasn't seen in two decades and eventually seeks him out. We spoke to Stern and Sundberg about Smith's incredible journey and their collaboration.

NFF: How did you first meet Che Smith?

Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg: Two years ago, we received a call from our friend Daniel Kellison, a producer in Los Angeles. Daniel was sitting with Che “Rhymefest” Smith, a Chicago rap artist he’d met when he was producing Jimmy Kimmel Live. Che, recently a co-writer on the Oscar winning song “Glory,” was then a Grammy-winning rapper who co-wrote “Jesus Walks” with Kanye West and had been a featured performer on Kimmel’s show.

On a hurried phone call, Che shared his story with us and we were hooked.

Che explained that he had recently purchased his father’s childhood home in the Chatham neighborhood of Chicago’s south side and had moved in with his wife Donnie, a Chicago school teacher, and his 14 -year-old son Solomon. Che was looking for stability for his own family and a safer neighborhood for Solomon, and Chatham has a strong history as a solid community that has held together against the increasing violence and gang pressures of the south side.

Che hadn’t seen his father in over 25 years. Che had grown up with his grandparents and his mother, who was 15 when she gave birth to Che and battled drug addiction throughout Che’s early childhood. Che had only vague memories of his father as someone who came by sporadically, drank beer in the basement, and occasionally took him to movies.

Not knowing if his father was still in Chicago - or even alive - he called his mother and with relative ease tracked down his father. He was drinking every day and living at a homeless center just blocks from where his wife taught school. The next day, Che met his father - whom he had last seen when he was 12 years old - at their neighborhood library. His father, Brian, was overcome with emotion but Che was wary. He was afraid to fully embrace the man he felt had abandoned him and he was not ready to call him dad. He wasn’t sure what this relationship would require, or if he wanted any part of it.

When Che finished telling us about meeting his father, we were concerned that we had missed the emotional trigger for the story by not filming the first reunion in the library. Che then explained that as a rapper, and as a person growing up without a sense of legacy and history, he was accustomed to documenting his life. Che had filmed the day he found the house, the weeks spent settling in and unpacking boxes…. and the day he met his father!

Che shipped us all this early footage overnight and we watched everything he had shot. One week later, we booked tickets to Chicago and began what would end up as an 18-month experience tracking Che and his father’s journey from homelessness and alcoholism to self-discovery and redemption.

NFF: Did you spend a significant amount of time with him before you started filming, given that the film documents a very vulnerable moment in his life?

Stern and Sundberg: We decided to follow his unfolding story and so we began filming right away, but we spent a lot of time on the phone talking with Che between shoots. We spent hours talking about his family, his life, his growing relationship with his dad so when it came to filming there was a sense of intimacy already established.

NFF: Were you ever concerned about Brian's willingness to participate in the film?

Stern and Sundberg: Brian has always been very open and willing to be filmed. He never indicated any concerns so we were never worried. We spent a lot of time with Brian just hanging out, having a meal, getting to know each other.
NFF: You've made character studies like Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, which played the festival in 2010, and broader, more political works like The End of America. Do you feel that you approach the process differently depending on your subject matter?

Stern and Sundberg: We try to ground all our films in strong characters, and even as we look at social issues, the stories emerge from the main characters in the film. In the case of The End of America, the film was driven by Naomi Wolf’s point of view that we brought to life.

NFF: Can you speak a little bit about your collaboration, and how you two work together as directors in the field?

Stern and Sundberg: We spend a lot of time talking about the project, how it will look and feel, the tone, the narrative through lines. We will both spend as much time in the field as we can either together or solo. There seems to often be a natural flow to how we work.

An Interview with How to Change the World Director Jerry Rothwell

How to Change the World, a Special Jury Award winner at Sundance, tells the lively story behind Greenpeace, the world's largest activist organization. We spoke to director Jerry Rothwell about molding hundreds of hours of archival 16 mm footage into a cohesive group portrait and much more.

What sparked your interest in Greenpeace and their origins? Did you feel it was a very pertinent subject matter?

Whilst researching a different project in the Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, I realized that Greenpeace was in the process of centralizing its film archive from its various national offices. They’d employed an archivist to look at the 1500 cans of 16mm they had in order to decide what was worth keeping. I’ve always been interested in how radical organisations form and grow, so it seemed a good opportunity to explore that through this material. At the time we didn’t really know what was on those reels. I started reading the books of Bob Hunter – first president of the Greenpeace Foundation – and loved his honest, humorous writing about those years.

There are lots of reasons to explore this story now. I think we’re in a phase which is perhaps a bit like the end of the sixties – the death throes of one kind of social organization and the emergence of something different – or at least the need for it. I was also interested in how older people thought about their radical past. I thought maybe we could make a film in which the lessons of that period became visible to a younger generation.

The film uses a fair amount of archival footage. How did you go about acquiring access to the clips, and how much footage did you have to sort through to whittle it down to what appears in the film?

Greenpeace were very supportive of our exploration of the archive, though they didn’t have any editorial control over the film. We scanned around 20 hours of it at HD resolution and synched it up to the audio on the original reel to reel tapes.

I started with the shape of a story based on Hunter’s writings and on the period between 1971, when the group sailed a boat into a nuclear test zone in Alaska, and 1979, when, victims of their own success and mired in internal conflict, they essentially gave the organisation away to an international board, in order for it to grow. So I was looking for archive that would help tell that story, but then the archive itself started to dictate how particular scenes worked.

There were areas where the Greenpeace footage was very strong (for example the first anti-whaling campaign) and areas where there was very little. We also did a lot of research looking for archives held by others, so maybe 30% of the archive in the film comes from other sources. I think in total, including all the archive and the interviews, we had around 100 hours to work with.

Given a handful of your subject's contentious personal histories, did any of them have qualms about participating?

Almost everyone I approached was keen to contribute. I think this was a key moment in all of their lives and shaped who they are, so they wanted to have a say in how it was represented. I was really grateful for the honesty and thoughtfulness all of them brought to the interviews. The film tells a contested history – and it was crucial that people were willing to explore that candidly.

Can you describe how your approach differs -- if at all -- when shooting and then editing your own footage, versus working with someone else's? Are you able to achieve a greater sense of objectivity with the latter? 

I don’t think it’s so much a matter of objectivity. Both archive films and those shot contemporaneously require a strong relationship with the subject and inevitably the finished film is just one possible view. I tend to work in the same way for both – in the sense that process starts with a sense of a rough possible shape, which gradually adds detail and depth as production develops. In a story that is unfolding whilst you shoot, that shape is a response to events and to people and the footage you manage to capture. In an archive film, watching archive for the first time is a bit like shooting – it sparks ideas and the shape of the film develops in an interaction with the material.

NFF Award Winners Announced!

NFF is proud to announce the winners of this year’s Audience Awards: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL for Best Narrative Feature, Ron Davis’ HARRY & SNOWMAN for Best Documentary Feature, and Eric Rockey’s PINK BOY for Best Short. Me and Earl will screen tomorrow at 9:30 am in the Dreamland Main, and Harry & Snowman will follow at 10 am in the Dreamland Studio.

The Audience Award Best Film runner up was animated comedy SHAUN THE SHEEP THE MOVIE, written & directed by Richard Starzak & Mark Burton.

Kristen Dávila’s COUNTERINTELLIGENCE, a political satire set in Pakistan involving the CIA, a budding jihadist group, and an indebted gambler who plays the two off one another in an attempt to save his own neck. Dávila receives $5000 cash prize and one of only four coveted spots to participate in partner organization the Screenwriters Colony month-long writing retreat in October.

The Feature Screenplay Competition jury was comprised of Kyle Patrick Alvarez, Director, The Stanford Prison Experiment; Franklin Leonard, Founder, The Black List; and Nigel M. Smith, Managing Editor, Indiewire.

NFF recognizes the remarkable renaissance on the small screen through two Television Pilot Competitions, one for Hour-Long Pilots and the other for Half-Hour Pilots. Both winners receive a $1000 cash prize, as well as a consultation with a Showtime executive.

The Half-Hour Television Pilot winner is SOLD by Jonathan Schwartz, which is set in a fine-arts auction house.

The Hour-Long Television Pilot winner is ICE by Estella Gabriel, which details the conflicts and violence faced by a border patrol agent.

The Television Pilot Competition jury was comprised of Jacob Fenton, Agent, TV Talent, United Talent Agency; Bob Fisher, Executive Producer/Co-Creator, Sirens; and Cynthia Littleton, Managing Editor, TV, Variety.

The Short Screenplay Competition winner is MORE COW BELL by Andy Nellis, a dark portrait of a farm family. Nellis receives a $500 cash prize.

The winner of the Best Screenwriting in a Short Film Award, given to an exceptional short film featured in this year’s festival, went to writer/director Shaka King and writer Kristan Sprague for MULIGNANS.

The Shorts Competition jury was comprised of New York film critic and author Thelma Adams; Kate Lyn Sheil, Actress, House of Cards & Writer, Men Go to Battle; and Trey Edward Shults, Writer/Director, Krisha.

The Festival’s Teen View Jury Award, selected by a group of Nantucket junior high school students, went to BIRTHDAY, written & directed by Chris King.

Earlier this weekend, the winner of the ninth annual Adrienne Shelly Foundation Excellence in Filmmaking Award was announced, which bestows a cash prize to a female filmmaker in honor of the late director. The award went to director Crystal Moselle for her acclaimed debut documentary, THE WOLFPACK.

Dr. Philip Zimbardo and Kyle Patrick Alvarez on The Stanford Prison Experiment

At the Sundance Film Festival, Dr. Philip Zimbardo and director Kyle Patrick Alvarez sat down to discuss the former's psychological experiments, which served as the basis for Alvarez's film, The Stanford Prison Experiment. 1n 1971, Zimbardo embarked on a study of power dynamics as he assigned 24 male Stanford undergraduates to the role of either prisoner or guard, with absolute power given to the enforcers, resulting in a very violent and tense experiment. Check out the video below to learn more from the pair.

Alexandra Shiva on How To Dance in Ohio

Alexandra Shiva's How to Dance in Ohio concerns a rite of passage that would be challenging for any young adult -- the spring formal -- but for Marideth, Caroline and Jessica, being on the autism spectrum makes it arguably more anxiety inducing than usual. Taking a predominately observational approach, Shiva follows her three subjects in the months leading up to the dance, through counseling sessions, social skills training and more. We spoke to the New York-based Shiva about what led her to Columbus, Ohio, as well as her collaboration with young women on the spectrum.

NFF: How did you come across the center in Columbus?

Alexandra Shiva: I originally began researching a film about coming of age with autism in New York where I live. I then met a woman at a conference in Newark, NJ who immediately struck me in the way that she was able to talk about her own experience as someone living on the autism spectrum. She was from Columbus, Ohio and she invited me to visit her there and to meet the social skills therapist whom she credited with the remarkable progress she had made in her life. When I met Dr. Amigo and his therapeutic community, I knew that I was meeting a remarkable group of individuals. When I found out that they were about to begin a 3-month preparation for a spring formal, I knew this was the most accessible and relatable way to tell this story.

NFF: Did you have to spend more time with the film's subjects than you normally would in terms of building a rapport given that they are on the spectrum? Were they ever uncomfortable with the idea?

Shiva: Absolutely, it was a very unique and collaborative process with the subjects from the beginning. Dr. Amigo spent about a month processing with everyone the idea of being in the film, and helping them decide what level of participation they were comfortable with: being filmed in therapy, in an individual interview, in their home/school/work lives, or not at all. Then when we first got to Columbus, the clients and their families had many questions, so we held a “town hall” meeting to address their concerns. Then the crew and I spent the first week meeting with 5 clients at a time, describing everything from where we would be in the room during filming, to how close the equipment would be to them. Some people were more curious about the physicality of the filming and wanted to touch the camera and the boom, and others had specific questions about why we wanted to make this film. They shared with us why they wanted to participate, and overwhelmingly, it was that they wanted their particular experience to be known to others, and to feel seen and heard.

NFF: At what point in the filming process did you decide to settle on the three protagonists?

Shiva: Over the course of the three months of filming, we spent time outside of the counseling center with eight individuals, both female and male. But when we got into editing room, it became very clear early on that Marideth (age 16), Caroline (age 19) and Jessica (age 22) were not only extremely compelling, but they were also at three critical transitional stages of coming of age - high school, college and work. We also found these young women and their mothers to be more engaged in the specific rites of passage around a prom than their male peers, though the young men remained very important to us in the narrative of the film.

NFF: Your previous film Stagedoor was set at a theater camp. What is it you respond to in portraying adolescents amid so-called rites of passage?

Shiva: My work often circles back to people searching for belonging, and I think that coming of age stories are particularly ripe for that exploration. Coming of age is complicated for everybody, whether you're going to your first dance, or your first date, or simply trying to make a new friend. The young adults in How to Dance in Ohio struggle deeply with the challenges around social connection, and the film follows them as they persevere, and is a testament to their resilience.

Elizabeth Giamatti on A Woman Like Me

Diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, Alex Sichel decides to rewrite her life's script by casting Lili Taylor as a fictional version of herself in a film about a woman who surmounts the exact same illness. Piecing together that narrative with behind-the-scenes documentary, Sichel and co-director/producer Elizabeth Giamatti forge an entirely unique hybrid film about facing and overcoming one's fears in life and art. We spoke to Giamatti about their collaboration on A Woman Like Me and what it was like to finish the film after Sichel's passing.

NFF: What was your collaboration with Alex like on the film? Correct me if I'm wrong, but initially you started out as just the producer.

Elizabeth Giamatti: You’re right. I can tell you how it evolved, and I will, but really the most central and important fact about the collaboration was its joyfulness. It was a fantastic creative relationship, and it mostly felt completely seamless in terms of how we each saw the film and how those individual visions came together to form a collective vision that we both loved and understood the same way. Our individual ideas at the beginning fed one another, and the movie that evolved was something that we both would have characterized, I believe, as “ours” -- there was never a “hers” and “mine” thing, regardless of who was producing and who was directing. We always saw it as “a film by” both of us.

During the initial development stages, we didn’t have clearly defined roles, but when we were ready to shoot the fictional scenes, Alex said to me, “I think I need to be the director.” It was a great moment for her to say that, and I was in fact happy to have some definition for myself at that point as the producer.

Then, after we shot the fiction, we spent six months together watching our footage every day with our editor, talking about every frame, making notes, talking about what worked and what didn’t and why, and during that time we were still defining our roles as director (Alex) and producer (me). But when Alex got sick, we had to have one of those very hard end-of-life conversations. She asked me what I thought about finishing the movie without her. She wanted me to do it, and I wanted to do it, and at the same time I knew it would be an impossible task for me as producer – without a director -- to sit there and think, “Okay, now what would Alex do?” I told her that in order for me to finish the film I thought we needed to be co-directors in order for me to be able to make the thousand and one decisions one has to make in order to edit a movie. And she agreed.

NFF: Did you or Alex ever intend to make the narrative portion with Lili Taylor as a standalone film? Did you always know it would be woven into the framework of the documentary?

Giamatti: Initially, when we very first started talking about this movie, it was a straight up pure fictional film – feature length, narrative, etc. Though we were also, on a parallel track, talking about a documentary version – or rather, maybe a video diary that turned into a blog. We were starting small. So this hybrid form was something that evolved over time and many conversations, but by the time we wrote and shot the fiction we knew that it was going to be part of this hybrid movie and we designed it as such – even though we didn’t know exactly how they were going to be woven together.

NFF: Alex passed away before the film was completed. What was it like to finish it without her there?

Giamatti: Well, it was hard in terms of the personal loss of my very dear friend and collaborator, but it was also, strangely, okay from a creative perspective, because by then I knew – or at least I thought I did, which is all that mattered – what our collective vision for the movie was. Alex was very present inside my head by then, so I actually had very few moments of sitting there in the edit saying, “What would Alex do?” And that is lucky, because I think that would have been paralyzing.

NFF: As far as the formal aspects and hybrid nature of the film, did you draw from any particular influences?

Giamatti: Strangely, most of the movies that we used as references were more because of their thematic and tonal resonances than because of their formal structure – maybe because there weren’t that many hybrids to draw from, and also because hybrids are all so different from one another in how and why and how often they choose to incorporate fiction. We did refer often to an incredible film by William Greaves called Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, but then just as often we would talk about Day for Night or All That Jazz or The Wizard of Oz, which was a great parallel for us (in fact we had quite a lot of references to it both in the fiction and the doc that didn’t make it into the final cut – for good reasons, but the idea was incredibly helpful). Agnes Varda’s The Beaches of Agnes was also really inspiring – she’s so free in that movie to not follow rules, to tell her story however she wants to – and if a giant talking puppet serves her one minute, that’s great, but she doesn’t feel a need to return to it if it doesn’t serve her later in the film. That was incredibly helpful. Also, any movie that managed to treat heavy subjects with a certain kind of lightness and humor was helpful to us.

NFF Alum Ben Niles Talks Some Kind of Spark

Ben Niles' Some Kind of Spark is an insightful look inside Julliard's Music Advancement Program for underprivileged, inner-city children from the ages of 8 to 14. We spoke to NFF alum Niles (Note By Note) about his relationship to music and his filmmaking process.

NFF: What led you to Juilliard's Music Advancement Program? Your previous film looked at the creation of a Steinway, so it begs the question: do you have a personal background in music?

Ben Niles: I don’t have a musical background but have made several attempts to learn guitar and piano in the past. I just didn’t have the patience to keep after it. I begged my mother to teach me piano but had no patience as a kid. I took guitar lessons three times over the years, and even dragged a set of drums to perform Elton John’s SOMEONE SAVED MY LIFE TONIGHT in front of my class in 3rd grade. But we always had music playing in the house and I’m absolutely a firm believer in the benefits of music education.

I was drawn to my first feature NOTE BY NOTE (which also played at Nantucket) because it represented a dying breed of hand-craftsmanship that we don’t see much of these days, not necessarily the musical aspect of it.

The story behind SOME KIND OF SPARK inspired me when I read an article in the NYT about inner-city kids in an outreach music program at the Juilliard School. Sadly, the article was about the lack of funding and the danger of the program folding. I find it puzzling that the benefits of music education are so profound and well documented and yet, our society does not embrace it in the schools. The kids in SPARK come from communities that struggle with arts funding, like most, and it was inspiring to see them grow in so many ways through their music education. As one of the teachers, Bill Ruyle, so aptly put it, “you don’t have to become a musician to benefit from music or music education. It can inform you in many ways. It’s about being a human being.

NFF: You shot the film over a two year period -- how long did it take to edit all that footage, and what were some of the hardest decisions you had to make in the editing room?

Niles: We filmed SPARK over a 2+ year period and another year of editing. In the film we follow 6 kids but we documented about 13 over time. It was difficult to pin-point the group we really wanted at first. We were coming in very cold as no one had been allowed to film this program before and there were 60 kids at the first audition. That was tough in itself but then editing kids out after all their time and openness was hard. I tried to remind the families often that this could happen but surely there was some disappointment. But the hardest call was keeping in the scene where Ami has a very difficult recital. My editor, Sara Pellegrini, and I wrestled with this for weeks. It’s a hard scene to watch and we were sensitive to Ami having to relive this over and over. I screened the film for her and her mother and we discussed why we wanted it in. (It’s true to form for any musician and helped illustrate that learning/playing music is not all a bed of roses.) The next day, Ami’s mother called me and we discussed it further. in the end, it was their call and I’m pleased they gave their consent. Now, when Ami comes to festivals, she gets a standing ovation for her bravery and perseverance. She deserves every bit.

NFF: What was it like working with such a large cast of children and educators?

Niles: Working with a large cast of students and educators was difficult, at best. I learned a lot from this but each of our kids and teachers in the film represented something we felt we needed. Everyone was terrific to work with but logistically, it was a challenge and certainly made Sara’s job that much harder. Juilliard was great to give us such unfettered access but filming in any institution like that always has a certain amount of red tape involved. As a documentary filmmaker, I don’t have 3-4 people on staff to assist with stuff like that so any similar scenario like this in the future would have to be met with more support.

NFF: Do you have another project in the works yet?

Niles: I am very excited about another project I am currently on. Quite a departure from my first two films, STILL WE RISE is a feature length doc about 3 mental health clinicians in war-torn Liberia. I am co-directing with Molly Raskin, a seasoned journalist and filmmaker for the PBS News Hour, among others.

Liberia has only one practicing psychiatrist for a country of 4 million and 40% are believed to have PTSD—not to mention the trauma from the recent Ebola crisis. Our film follows Quendi, Helena and Aaron, all survivors of the war, as they attend school and ultimately graduate as the first class of mental health clinicians determined to help heal their country. Their perseverance and fortitude is palpable and inspiring to watch. The film is in production and we will return for a final round of filming later this summer with an eye on a finished edit early next year.

Finalists For The 2015 Showtime Tony Cox 60-Minute and 30-Minute TV Competitions

We're pleased to announce the three finalists in our Showtime Tony Cox 60-Minute and 30-Minute TV Competitions. Winners of both competitions will receive a $1000 cash prize, an all access pass to the festival and a consultation with a Showtime programming executive. Thank you to everyone who submitted and stay tuned for the winners!

60-Minute TV Pilots

Kingdom of Fife by D.L. Wright

A decadent story of power, obscene wealth, romantic entanglements and one reputation ruining incident -- involving a sheep.

ICE by Estella Gabriel

ICE is a hard-hitting, character-driven television series in the hyperrealism style of “The Wire” that captures the conflicts, violence, and humanity of the gritty world of the Nogales, Arizona/Mexico border, a volatile region where nothing is as it seems.

Wilde Life by Andrea Janakas

When forensics detective Logan Wilde is transferred from homicide to wildlife after being obsessed with a cold-case that she could not let go of, she finds herself leaving the city to work out of a small lab in Oregon, investigating the billion dollar business of animal trafficking.

30-Minute TV Pilots

On Cloud Nine by Mimi Jeffries

After accepting a bride to attend her twin brother's wedding, a single mother with no real prospects finds herself running her dysfunctional family's wedding planning company, On Cloud Nine.

Dead to Me by Stephanie Westendorf

A late 20s couple finally ends their long-decaying relationship, but when Mira, Damien's ex-girlfriend, suddenly dies and re-appears post-mortem without the ability to leave Damien's side, the pair are once again stuck together.

Sold by Jonathan Schwartz

An art historian begins working at a fine ­arts auction house, where she clashes with the profits­ driven director and high­ society chairman.