THE UNFIXING

In THE UNFIXING, Nicole, a Brooklyn born mother of two, offers a visual diary of destruction, grief, pain, love, and transformation.  Using family archives, verité, and animation to meticulously weave a pathway of metaphorical scenes, she explores how all these ripple outward, echoing across generations and landscapes.

A surfing accident triggers a sickness in Nicole, she cannot work and can barely parent her kids. No doctor can identify the cause. As she begins to unravel the mystery of what is wrong with her, she discovers larger and larger questions connecting her journey with her parents, her children, and Mother Earth.

Her youngest child, Blue, expresses their deep anxiety about the climate crisis. They tell her that the Earth their generation is inheriting “is like getting a broken present and we’re expected to fix it.”  They have lost part of their mother to illness and they are losing parts of the planet - polluted oceans, burnt forests, and dying species - to the global environmental crisis. 

Then Nicole's older child Pilar gets sick with Lyme disease - which is on the rise because of climate change.  She has episodes of paralysis and is unable to go to school.  Nicole’s survival strategy of learning from her own losses now becomes impossible. 

Losing her will to live, Nicole has a vision of her father who died of AIDS when it too was little understood. Seeing him at peace gives her the courage to face the heartbreak, both personal and global, around her.  By exploring the visual, scientific, and spiritual threads interconnecting these losses she begins to move her own grief for the years lost to illness out of the shadows. 

Nicole and Pilar are in the Rocky Mountains seeking treatment while forest fires fill the air with smoke. The pandemic is in full throttle.  Nicole is terrified and losing faith - is the story a tragedy?  She is reminded about her lessons in neuroplasticity - that fear can block learning and lead to the very pathway she doesn’t want.  She must release her fear and find a way forward. 

Through a series of encounters with wise women, nature, and her own dreams, Nicole discovers that the whole world is not broken, there is beauty and regeneration and change.  She hikes alone up a mountain to a stunning alpine lake.  Wild Gray Jays approach her and eat out of her hand, filling her with pure joy, renewal, and wonder.   Finding comfort that we - all of us - are just a very small part of this planet that created us, she concludes that we can cast a new story in our bodies and in the landscape.  One that transforms the transition and loss and sees possibility and hope as we forge a future together.