HANGMAN is about a recently widowed woman working through the complexities of grief with the help of friends, strangers, and Tupperware.
I lost my brother to suicide and I wrote this story based on my experience with grief and being "left behind."
-Sarah Rodenbaugh
Writer, Actor, Producer
UPCOMING FESTIVAL DATES:
DAM SHORT FILM FESTIVAL
February 16, 2024, 2:15pm
Elaine K. Smith Building
700 Wyoming St
Boulder City, NV
TICKETS: https://dsff20years.eventive.org/schedule
SEDONA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
February 29, 2024, 1:00pm
March 2, 2024, 7:00pm
Harkins Theatres
2081 West State Route 89A
Sedona, AZ 86336
TICKETS: https://sedonafilmfestival.com
F L L O W U S
C S T N D C R E W
Megan is a writer-director known for telling funny stories with real heart. Her short films EVERYBODY DOES IT and BUTTERCUP have screened internationally, earning several awards. Megan has directed for Funny Or Die—with over 20 million views and the most viewed video to date. The Roku Channel produced her most recent short, PICKLED, as part of an anthology of shorts by “the next generation of comedy directors.” She also directs commercials and PSA's, which earned her a Bronze Telly award and Platinum Best of Show Aurora Award.
Sarah Rodenbaugh is an award-winning actor and writer who received an acting scholarship to The New York Film Academy. Quitting her job as a television producer, she decided to move to Los Angeles to be a comedic actor. Since then she’s appeared in many commercials and has created acclaimed web content. This includes her webseries BROS, countless sketch and improv shows all over the country including Straitjacket Society (Winner of Funny Women Festival Los Angeles), The Groundlings and Upright Citizens Brigade. Sarah has a special ability to create stories in ways that are both funny and poignant.
Kevin Schlanser is an award-winning filmmaker and cinematographer. His film The Ataxian won Best Documentary at Dances With Films, Newport Beach International, and the Sedona International Film Festival. He has shot independent features, commercials and music videos for clients including the San Francisco and New York City Ballet. He has also shot shorts for Funny or Die. Kevin loves using the camera to help tell the story at hand in the most succinct, intuitive and powerful way possible.
Kelsey is an award-winning screenwriter and accomplished producer. She produced (as well as co-wrote and co-starred) in the webseries OVER EASY which was picked up by DB&A Television and aired on Roku. She co-wrote the feature film Unearth which is currently available on Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Showtime. She is a producer on two Roddenberry Podcast Network Podcasts, Fanaddicts with hosts Clare Kramer (Buffy, Bring it On) and David Magidoff (The Morning Show, Dexter: New Blood) and Quoting Gene Roddenberry which is hosted by Rachel True (The Craft) and Trent Vanegas (Pink is the New Blog).
Alexander is a writer, artist and producer living in Los Angeles. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Jacobin, Salvage, among others. He is an editor at Locust Review and a producer of its podcast Locust Radio. He is excited to bring the perspective he's gained in his decades-long career as an art critic to practical use. A return to his roots as a theater-kid, he is embracing a new style of story telling and putting the organizational skills he gained running multiple publications to use in the film world.
Sascha Alexander is an actress and screenwriter with a history of widely-watched feminist content. Her viral short-film about women and pole-dance “Why I Dance” has 1.8 million views on Vimeo and was written up in GQ, Vanity Fair Italia, Shape, Redbook, Huffington Post and Buzzfeed. Her two-woman show about learning to love a body she couldn’t control, “Naked and Crazy” played to sold-out audiences in Los Angeles and was featured on the front page of the Village Voice’s calendar section in NYC. Her comedy short “Unemployment Assistance” was front-paged by Funny or Die in 2012. Her and Dayna Schaaf’s drama pilot “Trust Funded” was a quarter-finalist in the Page International Screenwriting Competition in 2019. Their dramedy pilot about invisible illness, “In Sickness or In Health” advanced to the second round of the Sundance Episodic Lab 2020. Her feature film about disability “Rally” is currently in development with Stefanie Black at APA.
Dayna Schaaf is an actress, writer and producer who specializes in female-driven, current-events-driven content. Her first Sundance experience was appearing in the award-winning Sundance 2010 Short Film “Desert Wedding,” a story about a privileged bride who is forced to confront her humanity in a deep and shocking way on her wedding day. She has also appeared on “The Vampire Diaries,” “NCIS: New Orleans,” Netflix’s “Messiah,” alongside Janelle Monae in the political thriller “Antebellum” and will be appearing with Josh Holloway in the upcoming J.J. Abrams series “Duster”. Hers and Sascha Alexander’s 1-hour drama pilot “Trust Funded” about a teen detective using her smarts and resourcefulness to make herself safe in the world was a quarter-finalist in the Page International Screenwriting Competition in 2019. Their dramedy pilot “In Sickness or In Health” was featured by screenplaycoverage.com in February of 2020, advanced to the second round of the Sundance Episodic Lab 2020 and was featured in the ASL Reading Series in the fall of 2020.
In Loving Memory of Aaron.
"Not all who wander are lost."
-J.R.R. Tolkien