Outside the Control Group

This is my second entirely self-made, independent film. I wrote the screenplay entirely in English and formatted it in Fade In, without any AI assistance. Both the music and visuals were created by me using AI tools. My original motivation for making this film was to turn some of the experiences I have witnessed throughout my life into a story. Plot: At 23, Lance Madison has already spent much of his life without a place to call home. Having lost both parents to drug overdoses during his childhood, he was passed from one relative’s home to another, never receiving the care or support he truly needed. By the age of 14, he had become homeless, and as he grew older, he gradually fell into substance use and overdoses. Julio Arturos, a 28-year-old Mexican American university professor, is conducting a research study using fNIRS, fMRI, and EEG to investigate how drug use affects brain function. With an urgent need to recruit participants with a history of substance use, he is introduced to Lance through a social worker. Through several brain imaging sessions and the psychological assessments that follow each scan, what begins as a strictly professional relationship between a researcher and his participant gradually develops into something more personal. The two begin to see beyond their respective roles and discover the lives and experiences of the person standing before them. Lance has always believed that he has nothing. To him, Julio is a brilliant, accomplished young professor who belongs to an entirely different world, someone who could never truly understand what it means to live the way he does. But Julio tells him that his own parents were once undocumented immigrants, and that his journey to where he stands today was also shaped by poverty, prejudice, and struggles surrounding identity and belonging. Seeing how completely Lance has almost given up on his future, Julio eventually asks him whether he truly wants to change his life. Lance answers, “Yes.” From that moment on, change is no longer a story about one person saving another. Instead, it becomes a journey through life that two people choose to face together.