PRODUCTION STATEMENT

In September of 2017, Léa and Camille successfully launched a Kickstarter campaign with which they raised over $37,000 for the production of Léa & I. With this money, they travelled and shot the film for three months and started the editing process with their editor Carter Feuerhelm. After finishing a first cut of the film, they found their executive producer Delphine Madrazo who financed the rest of the post production, which they finished in September 2018.

“In my mind, I had an idea of the kind of person that buys a camera, goes to Peru, drinks ayahuasca, this plant that was so powerful - and then films it. And I didn’t think I was that person, I didn’t believe I could do it. But there was something in our friendship that felt desperately important for me to show people. I felt that if people knew that they could feel so free with someone else, that someone could inspire genuine bravery, then it might change their lives as it has changed mine. And this was what I needed people to see: simply, that real epic friendship exists, that it could exist between two girls, two women. And the need to show that truth overpowered any fear that I couldn’t do it.” - Camille Shooshani (co-director)

SYNOPSIS

After graduating from college in Los Angeles, best friends Léa and Camille decide to travel around Latin America to find a cure to Léa’s genetic illness, cystic fibrosis. While traveling, they meet healers and shamans, experiment with indigenous plant medecines, and wonder what makes a life well-lived knowing one of them might have half the time to live it.

DIRECTOR

Camille Shooshani is an Iranian-American writer and director. In 2018, she shot, wrote, and directed Léa & I, her first documentary feature. She received her bachelor’s degree from USC in film studies and is currently completing her MFA in creative nonfiction writing at Colombia University, where she is writing a book of essays on her family and community in Los Angeles.

Léa Moret is a 23-ear-old Belgium-French writer, producer and actress. After receiving her bachelor’s degree in computer science at USC, she wrote and produced Léa and I, a documentary feature of which she is also the subject. Léa is now studying acting in Paris where she is writing her first novel.