Ricky Burchell
Malcolm "Mack" Rivers
Kurtis Blow
Deacon James
Ayla Demirci
Ren Cross
An Environmental Thriller
A broken pastor and a disgraced journalist uncover a decades-old corporate cover-up poisoning their Tennessee town. Fighting intimidation and legal threats, they must expose the truth before more people die.
Malcolm "Mack" Rivers is one prayer away from surrender. His wife, Shay, is gone. His faith, once unshakable, has eroded to silence. The pews are still full, but his prayers are empty. Each week, he visits the hospital rooms of his congregants—men, women, children—all fading from the same invisible sickness. With no family left and no answers from God, Mack is ready to let the river take him.
Then, one night, his prayer journal reveals a pattern he can't ignore: every name, every illness, traced back to the same stretch of poisoned water. For the first time since Shay's death, he feels something stir inside him—not faith, not hope, but purpose.
At the same time, Ren, an environmental journalist is on her way to her home town Tennessee to uncover the truth behind her grandmother's death and the increased cancer rates in the city.
Malcom and Ren join forces to bring the city together and uncover the hidden truth.
Armed with lab results, medical records, and testimonies from dying families, they go public. The article goes viral. EPA opens an emergency investigation. At a packed town hall, Mack delivers the sermon of his life—not about God, but about justice.
DOWNSTREAM is about ordinary people refusing silence. A thriller about poison in the water and poison in the system.
Naturalistic Realism: Handheld camera, natural light, documentary authenticity. We shoot in real locations—weathered churches, abandoned plants, dying towns.
Crushing Despair: Man bent over in darkness, head in hands. The visual grammar of complete emotional collapse. Mack at his lowest—before the pattern emerges, before purpose returns. Raw, visceral grief captured in chiaroscuro lighting.
Isolation & Grief: Characters alone in frame. Blue-tinted darkness. The weight of loss made visual. Mack watching news of victims, unable to save anyone—not Shay, not his congregation.
Paranoia & Surveillance: Being watched. The thriller elements emerge from character fear—Black SUVs tracking them, anonymous threats, the sensation of invisible eyes everywhere.
Corporate Barriers: Chain-link fences. "Protected Area - No Admission" signs. The visual language of exclusion—corporations keeping people out while poison leaks in. Rusted gates hiding toxic secrets.
Decay & Abandonment: The chemical plant is our gothic cathedral—rusted, forgotten, still killing. Practical locations with real texture. Beauty in rot. Danger in stillness.
Water as Metaphor: The contaminated river runs through everything. Beautiful. Deceptive. Killing silently. Our recurring visual motif.
Escalating Tension: Wide establishing shots compress into claustrophobic close-ups as threats mount. Paranoia becomes tangible.
Flint. Camp Lejeune. East Palestine. Corporate poisoning isn't history—it's happening now. DOWNSTREAM channels our collective rage at systems that protect profit over people.
Environmental justice. Grassroots organizing. Journalism under siege. Distrust of institutions. This film speaks to our cultural moment with surgical precision.