About the Film

Fentanyl poisoning is now the leading cause of death for people ages 18–45 in the United States, yet most media portrayals focus on trauma, sensationalism, or punishment. Still Here was created to shift that narrative, to spotlight empathy, remembrance, and the quiet, disorienting ripple effects that follow a single loss.

This film doesn’t center the moment of poisoning, it centers the aftermath. It asks: what happens when someone’s world unravels in the silence that follows? How does grief distort time, memory, and even reality? And what does it mean to stay, as a friend, as a witness, when someone you love retreats into that distortion?

As a filmmaker, I’m drawn to stories that live in emotional stillness. Stories that hold beauty and ache in the same frame. Still Here is a quiet refusal to let these losses disappear into silence, or to reduce them to statistics. It’s a space for feeling, for remembering, and for seeing the invisible weight that grief can carry.

Still Here is a short film about Lila, a young artist in Los Angeles who is unable to accept the sudden death of her boyfriend Caleb, who unknowingly ingested fentanyl while using cocaine. In the wake of his death, Lila becomes increasingly disconnected from reality, retreating into vivid dreamscapes where Caleb still exists, flipping pancakes, playing guitar, walking with her through the park. These moments are warm, even beautiful. But they aren’t real.

Her closest friends, Maya and Sam, who were present the night Caleb died, become alarmed as Lila begins to deny the truth entirely. When she insists Caleb is still alive, they intervene, confronting her with the reality she refuses to face: that it was a single, unintentional exposure to fentanyl that took him, and no amount of memory or imagination can bring him back.

Still Here explores the distorted space grief creates, where time collapses, denial becomes survival, and memory feels more vivid than the present. The story builds to a moment of reckoning, where Lila must confront not only Caleb’s death but her own unspoken guilt and helplessness.

In the final scene, she quietly re-engages with the world: pinning a hand-drawn flyer to a café bulletin board, warning others of fentanyl’s presence in street drugs, including a link to access Naloxone. It’s a small act, but a powerful one, rooted in remembrance and harm reduction.

Still Here is a story about memory, grief, and the blurry edge between love and letting go, and the quiet bravery it takes to come back to life.