Genre
Synopsis
The story of FALL explores a little known chapter of life on the domestic home front during World War II. It is the story of two people, Ulrich (Rick) Schiller, and Betty Yamada: one a German POW sent to a prison camp in Colorado, the other a young Japanese girl relocated to an internment camp just a few miles away. Both sent to work on a nearby farm, both disaffected and clashing with their
compatriots, they bond over their predicament and their affection for a friend of Rick’s, a gentle yet strong-willed soul named Conrad and his life affirming influence on the two of them.
Betty is an enigma to her friends and family, she is a Nisei who identifies herself as a typical full-blooded American girl, and cannot relate to her more traditional friends and family. This leads to
misunderstanding and outright clashes over her lifestyle, attitudes, behavior and even her own dreams and ambitions. The only ones she trusts are her absent father and her Uncle Hitochi, a World
War I vet who sits silently by a little stream pretending to fish. Rick has his own conflicts to deal with: he is from a rural part of Germany, drafted into the Army, and holds no philosophical principals other than those needed to stay alive and survive the war. He has to deal with the hardcore Nazi element in camp which resorts to brutality and murder to keep those they deem traitors to the cause in line. He realizes that he and Conrad’s lives are in danger as long as he remains in camp.
Director Identity
Bio
Deborah Correa is Colombian-American producer and director who was chosen for the prestigious AFI Directing Workshop for Women. Her work spans television, film and podcasts with both narrative and documentary projects. Her credits include PBS, History Channel, Spotify, Travel Channel, Paramount+, Brave New Films and Hulu. While working on Peter Berg's Film 45/History Channel series, The Warfighters, Deborah worked with over 90 U.S. Spec-Ops Veterans who were both in front of and behind the camera. She continues to work with veterans in telling their stories. She recently directed Army Ranger veteran Josh Kelly in Re/Collection, which premiered at the Sun Valley Film Festival. Deborah recently completed production on a short documentary with industry veteran and social justice filmmaker Robert Greenwald and two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali. Her earliest work documented the return of a displaced village because of the violent narco-wars in her father's homeland of Colombia. While filming there, she revisited her childhood memories of this misunderstood and magical country. That experience continues to shape her direction in her work. Deborah recently completed production on her feature debut. Described as, “a soaring achievement,” (Film Threat) The War Between tells the story of two enemy soldiers who must unite to survive the Arizona desert. J Paul Johnson from Film Obsessive observes, “It’s perhaps unlikely territory for any first-time feature director and for female directors more broadly, to take on the Western and war film, two film genres long held dominated by male directors. But Correa, uses the familiar tropes of those genres to wreak new meanings from them, ones especially timely given our current fraught civic tensions."
Awards History
ISA - Semi Finalist Emerging Screenwriter's Competition
