NonDē Uprising

Brooke Berman is an award-winning playwright, filmmaker, and author of three books, including a memoir, No Place Like Home . Her plays have been produced all over the world and include Hunting and Gathering , Smashing (which she adapted for Natalie Portman), Out of the Water , Sam & Lucy , and more. Her most recent work is Ramona at Midlife , which is now streaming on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and F...

Diana Cherry is a writer, producer, and activist who writes the Substack I’m Thinking of Mending Things . She is the managing editor and producer for the upcoming The Who We Are Project , a documentary travel series that will uncover hidden histories of oppression, resistance, and resilience in the United States, focusing on the history of anti-Black racism. In Episode #026 of NonDē Uprising, Dian...

Count on Ari Gold to always take the non-traditional path or make what seems straightforward a bit more interesting. Ari’s most recent film, Brother Verses Brother , was executive produced by Francis Ford Coppola and premiered to rave reviews at SXSW. It’s a one-shot musical odyssey and a companion to Ari’s first book of poetry, Father Verses Sons . Ari’s work has screened at hundreds of other fes...

Sandra Lehner is considered the TV Futurist on Substack for her uncanny ability to understand where Gen Z gathers for their cultural diet. A former marketer for films, she now works with the people who create content to understand how Gen Z consumes content and strategically think about the media landscape. In Episode #024 of NonDē Uprising, Sandra untangles why she thought she left film for marke...

Thomas Verdi is a film director currently in pre-production on his feature debut, The Community . His work has been featured by Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, Film Independent, No Film School, AT&T Shape, and more. He also founded and runs Wellsboro Film Festival , Discontent Media Group , and The Film Fund , which has awarded over $150,000 in funding to winning filmmakers. In Episode...

TimG (Tim Gleason) worked as an engineer at Google for fourteen years. He led a wide variety of teams and eventually founded an internal startup that developed AppSheet Databases. His final role involved helping to launch NotebookLM. The day after he retired, The Big Break started production, and Tim suddenly began his career as an actor. In Episode #022 of NonDē Uprising, now-actor Tim Gleason of...

Sasha Santiago is a fixture in the NonDē community, and in many ways, was enacting NonDē elements in his work long before NonDē was coined. He’s a filmmaker with 20 years of work under his belt, much of which he’s written and shot within one month on tight budgets, with a series of short films he shot during the pandemic being made for what he has called #ZeroBudgetShoots. In Episode #021 of NonDē...

Shagun Singh is an artist, first and foremost. Through Urban Matter , she creates large-scale interactive sculptures that bring together architecture, technology, and human-centered design. Her installations include a pop-up mobile confession booth with an AI “priest,” a grid of illuminated pixels over an empty Brooklyn storefront allowing strangers to play ping pong using their phones, and an air...

It’s one thing to make a movie; it’s another to sell it. Alex LeMay’s Substack, Pitch Craft , helps creators pitch projects for funding. In addition to offering his own expertise on pitching to Hollywood studios, Alex is currently funding his own project openly sharing statistics and information to help fellow filmmakers see his process (how NonDe!). In Episode #019 of NonDē Uprising, Alex reimagi...

Stephen Follows mixes data and filmmaking in his fascinating Substack asking the questions you might have always wondered but never knew how to answer. If your brain hobbles down towards questions like “What makes people never want to rewatch a great film?” or “Which colors dominate movie posters and why?” , you’re in for a treat. And if being able to back that all up with charts and numbers gets...

jen harrington is an exemplar of the NonDē movement. She wrote and directed the horror movies Shook and Housekeeping , and has sold her scripts Hell’s Belles to Amazon Studios and The End of Liz As We Know It to Sony Pictures. She’s also had an impressive documentary career, editing Gaga: Five Foot Two , Banksy Does New York , Source Family , and Bogalusa Charm , for which she wrote as well. In he...

If you’re in the NonDē world, the FilmStack community, or have some knowledge of what it means to produce a movie, then you know of Ted Hope . He’s of course the brains behind Hope For Film , his Substack that helped launch the NonDē movement. So it’s quite appropriate for him to come back to the podcast and talk about the paradox of starting a leaderless movement. In Episode #016 of NonDē Uprisin...

Fawnia Soo Hoo is a freelance fashion and entertainment journalist whose bylines have appeared in Vanity Fair , The Hollywood Reporter , Elle , W Magazine , GQ , CNN , and more. She writes Whatever Nevermind on Substack, which explores Gen X pop culture through the lens of modern fashion, beauty, and entertainment. In Episode #015 of NonDē Uprising, Fawnia offers insight into the ultimate business...

Kate Wilson is the author of the Substack Kate Wilson Has Zero F***s to Give , where she writes essays on films. She’s also the author of the 2024 novella Prospects, which is about a woman who shows up in Los Angeles to work “in the industry” and which one reviewer described as having “made me laugh out loud many times, and moved me to tears in others.” She is the co-founder of the Call It! App ,...

jillian vogel has worn many hats throughout her career. She’s a development executive now but she’s also been a producer (she’s one of the producers behind the rom-com Fire Island ), a studio executive at Imagine Entertainment director of development at Jax Media, which helped create Russian Doll and Emily in Paris . Jillian also writes Chicken Scratch , her Substack where she offers a “peek insid...

Evan Shapiro is an Emmy- and Peabody-award winning producer of TV, films, and podcasts. He served as President of IFC and Sundance Channels and has become known as the “Cartographer of the Media Universe.” He currently runs the Substack Media War & Peace and co-hosts the Media Odyssey Podcast . He also recently collaborated with his daughter to make Skit , a $65k film that had distribution planned...

Having worked as an entertainment journalist and film critic, Charlotte Simmons now writes for her publication, The Treatment , while also writing screenplays, designing games, and being extremely modest about her creative output. Charlotte is without a doubt one of the sharpest, most introspective film critics on Substack. In her review of Saltburn , she essentially introduces a new method of fil...

Kate Casey is the host of Reality Life with Kate Casey , a daily podcast about unscripted television with over 1,500 episodes that is in the Top 10 in TV & Film on Apple Podcasts. She’s also the creator of What to Watch This Week With Kate Casey , where she shares the best in new unscripted TV, covering sports docs, true crime, deep-cut documentaries, reality gems, and everything in between. In Ep...

Courtney Daniels has written and directed three feature films: What Other Couples Do , Bedroom Story , and It’s Not You, It’s LA . She’s also published a book about microbudget filmmaking called Yes You Can – How to Make a Movie for Almost No Money , as well as a short novel, A Blind Date in NYC . And if that weren’t enough, she also hosts the podcast Gen X at Midlife . In Episode #009 of NonDē Up...

Richard Lorber is the Chairman and CEO of Kino Lorber, a leading independent film distributor in North America bringing films to audiences in theaters, on streaming with Kino Film Collection, and in physical home entertainment. Kino Lorber and Kino Film Collection are known for curating critically acclaimed arthouse films, documentaries, and international titles, including recent release Mr. Nobod...

Marion Ranchet currently runs Streaming Made Easy and co-hosts The Media Odyssey Podcast . With 20 years of experience in the industry, she advises streamers, distribution platforms, and technology vendors on how to launch and grow in Europe. In Episode #007 of NonDē Uprising, Marion Ranchet offers lessons to Americans from the European cinema ecosystem. She discusses the importance of localizatio...

Ted Hope is a producer on over 70 films, studio exec on over 60, and he launched Amazon’s foray into feature film production. Known as FilmStack’s resident coach, his newsletter Hope For Film is not only essential reading for today’s filmmakers, it is also where NonDē was born . Ted also initiated two community-curated newsletters: FilmStack Daily Digest and FilmStack Deep Dive . Before we started...

Dan Mirvish is a prolific filmmaker, equally prolific author, and the co-founder of Slamdance Film Festival. His book The Cheerful Subversive Guide’s to Independent Filmmaking was a #1 Amazon bestseller. His most recent film 18 1/2 is currently available to stream, while his upcoming film Atomic Fondue just launched on Kickstarter . In Episode #005 of NonDē Uprising, Dan Mirvish talks about the ex...

Danielle A. Scruggs is the founder and curator of Black Women Directors , a digital library . Her work has been featured in Marie Claire, Blavity, The Cut, and Block Club Chicago. In 2025, Danielle won two Webby Awards, including Best Personal Website and a People's Voice award. In Episode #004 of NonDē Uprising, Danielle A. Scruggs takes us back to the 90s and recalls the significance of Black ci...

Ben Sinclair is iconically known as the star and co-creator of the critically acclaimed show High Maintenance. His long list of additional acting credits includes the film Save Yourselves! and episodes of Dave and The Resort, which he also produced and directed, as well as an episode of Poker Face, which he also directed. In Episode #003 of NonDē Uprising, Ben Sinclair explains our culture’s need...