Snowflakes

Six-year-old Charly is stuck in a hospital room watching other children play in the snowy park while she is going through chemo. Even her parents and her favorite hot chocolate can't cheer her up. But everything changes when Lana, a fellow cancer patient, manages to make it snow in Charly's room.

The stories I’m most passionate about sit at the intersection of entertainment and social impact, which is what drew me to co-writing and directing Snowflakes. It was important to me that this wasn’t just a story showing two girls going through a difficult time, but for the film to be a reminder that there are moments of hope, joy, and magic when we least expect to find them. My co-writer and co-producer Tiziana Giammarino and I contacted Disney’s Make-A-Wish foundation in the US, Germany and Switzerland to collaborate with us on this film to enable wish kids, ambassadors and survivors to lend their voices to an animated character. For the English version, we were lucky enough to work with 10-year-old cancer survivor Violet Spataro and three-time double-lung transplant recipient, Travis Flores, who made this an incredibly authentic experience. Violet had a lot of similarities with Lana, since she still actively hands out toys and cheers up other children battling cancer. In Switzerland, we worked with Eleonore Pacella, who has been fighting cancer since birth. Just like our character Charly, she was stuck inside for weeks on end during chemo, wanting to play outside in the snow. In Germany, we worked with two 7-year-old girls with Muscular Dystrophy, who were incredibly excited to be part of a film that reflected their experiences in the hospital. The children brought life and authenticity to the story, as did invaluable feedback from the parents’ perspective. I wanted to create a film that shows audiences that even in an unfathomably difficult situation, there is room for levity and play to co-exist. My wish for this film is to tell a story of hope and to remind us that we all have magic inside of us.