About The Film

Backyard Wilderness will surprise and entertain viewers with the unexpected wonders of nature that are right under our noses - in our own backyards. Spanning a seasonal year around a suburban home, the film displays a stunning array of unique wildlife images and behavior - all captured by cameras mounted inside dens and nests, and moving along the forest floor and pond bottom, to reveal its inhabitants in rare and breathtaking intimacy.

We follow Katie, a young girl, and her modern family living next to the woods who are blind to the real-life spectacle around them, absorbed by an array of electronic devices in their busy lives. Katie gradually discovers the intricate secrets that nature has hidden so close to her front door and we experience the joy she finds in her interactions with this new world. The film reminds us that Wi-Fi is not the only connection that matters and that sometimes in ordinary places, you can uncover extraordinary things that can transform you forever - you just need to step outside.

Cast
Annie Fabian
Katie
Annie Fabian

Annie is thrilled to make her film debut in Backyard Wilderness. She is an avid hiker and enjoys exploring her own backyard wilderness whenever possible. Previous stage roles include Belle in Beauty and the Beast, Mulan in Mulan, Wendy in Peter Pan and Sally Brown in You're a Good Man Charlie Brown, in Croton Children's Theatre productions, and Little Red in Not So Grimm Fairy Tales and Clara in A Coney Island Christmas, in Croton Academy of Arts productions. A dedicated dancer with ten years of ballet training, Annie performed for four seasons in the Westchester Ballet Company's production of The Nutcracker. Annie is currently in eighth grade in Dobbs Ferry, New York.

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Bobby Axelrod
Ben
Bobby Axelrod

Bobby is a ninth grader in Montclair, New Jersey. He has been singing and acting since fourth grade, and has participated in many school and community theater productions including Oliver!, Into the Woods and Bye Bye Birdie. He has studied at Paper Mill Playhouse and Interlochen Arts Academy. Backyard Wilderness will mark his debut film role.

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Orlyne Garcia
Maria
Orlyne Garcia

Orlyne is an American/Dominican actress from Little Ferry, NJ. Orlyne started acting at 8 years old, and at 9 years old, she was signed with KPT Talent in New York. She has appeared in several projects and prints, including The Hunt with John Walsh on CNN, and several films. Orlyne speaks fluent Spanish, and enjoys riding her skateboard, playing basketball, drawing, and dancing. Orlyne continues to pursue her passion for acting and has a bright future ahead.

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Caleigh Barker
Narrator / The Voice of Older Katie
Caleigh Barker

Caleigh was born and raised in Toronto, Canada where she attended Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts in both the Musical Theater and Drama Focus programs. She then packed up her life, dreams in hand, and moved to New York City to study at NYU TISCH in the Department of Drama, from which she has just received her BFA. Along the way she studied with the Atlantic Theater Company, Stonestreet Studios and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. She spent a year working for Stonestreet Studios as an Editor and Assistant Teacher and has now moved back to Toronto where she splits her time between commercial acting, voice work, and her budding career as a singer and songwriter. She recently composed music featured in the Giant Screen film, Amazon Adventure.

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Filmmakers
Andrew Young
Director / Director of Photography / Producer / Writer
Andrew Young

Andrew Young is an Academy Award nominated, Emmy Award winning Director/Producer/Director of Photography. Drawn to stories where the lives of humans intersect with the nature, Young has just completed Backyard Wilderness, a 3D Giant Screen/IMAX® film, produced by Archipelago Films and Arise Media, a non-profit he co-founded to create groundbreaking media about the most urgent social and environmental challenges of our time.

Young's world class cinematography is shot primarily in 4K and 8K digital where he uses probe lenses, inventive motion-control rigs, time-lapse, and high-speed frame rates to capture wildlife and landscape in never-before-seen ways.

At Archipelago Films, he has directed and filmed both documentaries and fiction work, such as Children of Fate, Americanos, The Last Royals, Deadly Messengers and Madagascar: A World Apart with HBO, Cinemax, National Geographic, the BBC, and PBS. With a Master's Degree from Yale University in Physical Anthropology, he has extensive experience in science and animal behavior.

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Susan Todd
Director / Producer / Writer
Susan Todd

Susan is an Academy Award nominated, Emmy Award winning Director/Producer. As co-founder of New York-based production company Archipelago Films, Todd has directed, produced and written television and theatrical films that explore cutting-edge stories about nature and people's lives, with the highest production value.

Todd has just completed Backyard Wilderness, a 3D Giant Screen/IMAX® film, produced by Archipelago Films and Arise Media, a non-profit she co-founded to create groundbreaking media about the most urgent social and environmental challenges of our time.

At Archipelago Films, she has directed, produced and recorded sound for both documentaries and fiction work, such as Children of Fate, Americanos, The Last Royals, Lives in Hazard and Madagascar: A World Apart, broadcast on HBO, Cinemax, National Geographic, NBC, and PBS.

Todd has worked previously as a producer at PBS WNET, holds a Masters in Journalism, from Columbia University and studied filmmaking at Harvard University.

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Wendy MacKeigan
Writer
Wendy MacKeigan

Wendy is one of Canada's most experienced and respected film executives, possessing both a strong creative and business background. She is the co-writer of SK Films' current IMAX®/Giant Screen film, Amazon Adventure, in partnership with HHMI's Tangled Bank Studios. Wendy also co-wrote the acclaimed and award-winning Flight of the Butterflies, was Senior Story Editor on the award-winning film, Journey to Mecca: In the footsteps of Ibn Battuta and is the Producer/Story Editor of the outstanding eco-adventure series, The Water Brothers, broadcast in over 50 countries with multiple award-winning awards.

For a decade, Wendy previously ran the film investment agency for Astral Media, now owned by Bell Media, and has served on various boards and advisory committees, including as the former Chair of Women in Film and Television and for the Toronto International Film Festival.

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Jonathan Barker
Executive Producer
Jonathan Barker

Jonathan with over three decades of award-winning film and television experience, is a world leader in 3D film production and distribution. He specializes in IMAX®/Giant Screen films that combine human drama and natural history discoveries, such as his most recent multi award-winning release, Amazon Adventure and the internationally acclaimed, Flight of the Butterflies, starring Gordon Pinsent (Away from Her).

In addition to Amazon Adventure - taking home five of six possible awards from the Giant Screen Cinema Association and the Lumiere Award for Best 3D Large Format Documentary at Stereopsia in Brussels, Flight of the Butterflies was awarded Best Immersive 3D/Large Format film at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival - some of his outstanding productions include the Oscar® shortlisted IMAX® film, Bugs!, one of the most successful Giant Screen films of the past dozen years.

Jonathan successfully ran the film and distribution arms of IMAX Corporation before starting up his own company, SK Films and has produced films in of the deep ocean and in outer space.

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Sean B. Carroll
Executive Producer
Sean B. Carroll

Sean is Vice President for Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and the architect of HHMI's science filmmaking initiative. Sean has served as Executive in Charge or Executive Producer of more than a dozen feature or short documentary films, including Amazon Adventure for IMAX® and Giant Screens, Your Inner Fish (PBS), Mass Extinction (Smithsonian Channel) and Can Alzheimer's Be Stopped? (NOVA/PBS). An award-winning author and one of the world's leading evolutionary biologists, Carroll is also the Allan Wilson Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Wisconsin, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Stephen Apkon
Executive Producer
Stephen Apkon

Stephen Apkon is an award-winning filmmaker and social entrepreneur. He is a Co-Founder of Reconsider, which develops media and workshop experiences to catalyze reflection, dialogue, and action regarding our relationship to life and what we want to create while alive. He is the Founder and former Executive Director of the Jacob Burns Film Center, a non-profit film and education center located in Pleasantville, NY.

He is the Director (together with Andrew Young) and Producer of Disturbing the Peace, which received the first Roger Ebert Humanitarian Award. He is a Producer of several documentaries, including Presenting Princess Shaw, I’m Carolyn Parker, and Enlistment Days, and the Executive Producer of Planetary. He is also the author of The Age of the Image: Redefining Literacy in a World of Screens, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux – foreword by Martin Scorsese.

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Myles Connolly
Supervising Producer
Myles Connolly

Myles has worked on more than 25 IMAX® and 70mm films including the acclaimed Everest, The Living Sea, Samsara, Flight of the Butterflies, and, most recently, Amazon Adventure with SK Films and Wild Africa 3D for the BBC. The films he's produced have garnered numerous awards including two Academy Award nominations, the Cine Golden Eagle, the Grand Prix du Festival at the Theater du La Géode in Paris, and the Best 3D/Immersive award twice at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival. Myles is one of the top 3D Supervising Producers, with more than ten years of experience in this demanding field.

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Michael Male
Cinematographer / Associate Producer
Michael Male

Michael has over 30 years of experience filming natural history subjects from the tropics to the Arctic. He's spent months crouched in the wild, in blinds using telephoto lenses, and hours on his knees in the mud with macro lenses to capture animal behaviors, often for the first time. Michael is well-versed in the creative application of time-lapse, slow motion, night vision, infrared, probe lens, and remote camera techniques. He was nominated for an Emmy Award in Cinematography for his work on the Nature episode Crash and again for An Original DUCKumentary which won the Emmy for Best Nature Program.

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Katherine van Hengel
Production Supervisor/ Associate Producer
Katherine van Hengel

Katherine has extensive experience as a Producer and Production Manager on both narrative and documentary feature films. After working in the New York City financial world for J.P. Morgan, Katherine followed her creative passions into the film industry. Having grown up in much of the same area where Backyard Wilderness was shot, joining the team was a natural choice allowing Katherine to combine her love of the environment, financial savvy and drive for impactful filmmaking into one project. Katherine has worked with multiple productions including her most recent work on NBC Universal's remake of Francis Ford Coppola's, Dementia 13.

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