"You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another."
- Ernest Hemingway

Meet the Cast

Meet the Crew

Bessy Adut

Director/Producer/Co-Writer

Award-winning Writer/Director Bessy's short films have screened at international film festivals worldwide, and won audience awards including Pasadena Art Film Festival and Brooklyn Film Festival. In 2009, she graduated from California Institute of the Arts, MFA in Film Directing with Fulbright Grant. Last year, she received screenwriting program certificate at UCLA. She was selected for the CineStory Writers Retreat as a Quarterfinalist and nominated for Nate Wilson Joie de Vivre Award. She is working on making a proof of concept of short film before her first directorial feature debut. Xenia and Bessy met at UCLA Professional Screenwriting program and that became the beginning of their friendship & collaboration. They believed in this project and pieces started to come together.

Xenia Puiggros

Screenwriter

Xenia is a filmmaker/screenwriter from Barcelona, where she studied her BA in Film and TV. After that she left for London to further her filmmaking studies, and she stayed there for four years working in film development and production. When one of her short films was bought and made by an independent production company, she decided it was time to focus her efforts on her passion, writing. She moved to Los Angeles for a year to do a feature screenwriting course in UCLA and came out with two features under her arm. Now she lives in Barcelona, pursuing her career as a writer.

Eric Sherman

Producer & Consultant

Eric Sherman has been involved with the film industry nearly his entire life. In 1976, he founded Film Transform, Inc., a full-service production company that has produced virtually every type of "moving image" product--including feature films, television programs, educational series for PBS, documentaries, corporate profiles, instructional videos and commercials. He works as a consultant producer for Escape Room.

Brandon Miree

Producer

Brandon Miree is a writer, director and award-winning producer. In 2018 he founded his multi-media production company Moviefield Entertainment and is currently in various stages of development with several short and long-form projects for the screen. He completed professional programs at UCLA in both Producing and TV Writing in 2016. Before storytelling, Brandon was a professional football player for the Denver Broncos and Green Bay Packers. He is one of the Producers of Escape Room short film and potential EP for the feature film.

Yin Lui

Editor

Yin Lui is a picture editor from San Francisco who currently resides in Los Angeles, California. With over 15 years experience in the industry, and credits in nationally broadcasted commercials and web spots, she is using her storytelling skills in narrative work to create entertaining, compelling, and unique stories. She is currently available for freelance projects.

Bessy met Yin as she was looking for more narrative work to edit. Yin had amazing commercial reel. She jumped on board warming up with the Indiegogo intro video and she will be the editor of our short film and trailer.

Lasse Elkjaer

Film Music Composer

Lasse Elkjaer is a Los Angeles-based composer and orchestrator who has been working on several features, movie trailers and video game productions. Furthermore, he is collaborating with film composers such as five time Emmy winning composer Jacob Groth (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) and Golden Globe-nominated composer Christopher Young (Spiderman 3, Swordfish, Hellraiser). He won an award with the horror short film "Sticks" recently.

Serhat Sonmez

Storyboard Artist

Serhat Sonmez is a Turkish -American artist and illustrator currently based in Los Angeles, California. In 2003, he graduated from Marmarian Institute of Fine-Arts ( Istanbul ), with a BFA in Painting and Sculpting! He also dabbled in teaching as a fine arts teacher and teaching private art classes. His work is driven by making a strong visual impact by combining various styles and techniques as a way to follow an idea and in clarifying the content of each project.

The day after Sandy and Bessy came up with a shot list and talking about a storyboard, Serhat wrote to Bessy on Linkedin! Serhat did the first storyboard pages, poster and concept art that you see on the page.

Story

"Escape Room" is a film about a brilliant student who is bullied in high school and suffers from OCD reluctantly joins her older sister and her popular friends at a horror-themed Escape Room game. When the group realizes that a revenge-seeking Game Master has set them up in a custom-made deadly trap, the five teenagers start turning on each other. The two sisters will have to join forces in order to get out of the room alive. The theme involves love, trust, teen issues and the importance of the sisterhood. It is our hope to inspire audiences to pursue the idea of standing up for one another when confronted with adversities caused by a valued one. Our goal is to make the short proof of concept to move us to the next step: turn into a feature film.