Heartstorm

an open mic opera

88 minutes, 4K HD, color, 2025

Where artists gather, you never know who you’ll meet or how they can change the trajectory of your life. Heartstorm follows Lucia on a cathartic journey through memory and imagination inspired by the performers at an open mic. A self-love story of discovery, acceptance, and the transformative power of art.

HEARTSTORM is a narrative feature film about a young woman named Lucia attending an open mic for the first time and being forever changed. Lucia is a closet poet, so when she arrives at the mic and is prompted to put her name on the list, she politely declines, opting instead to just take it all in as a member of the audience. Throughout the course of the evening, her memory is triggered by the performers, launching her into dream-like flashbacks in which the artists on stage take on the roles of various people in her life. Through a series of sometimes humorous and sometimes heartbreaking flashbacks, she is forced to examine her views on family, love, and queerness.