The Producers

Alexis Neophytides – Director, Producer, Cinematographer

Alexis Neophytides is a documentary filmmaker and educator based in New York City. Her work centers around community and how we find meaning in people and place. She is the co-creator, co-director and producer of Neighborhood Slice, a public television documentary series that tells the stories of longtime New Yorkers who've held onto their little corner of the city despite fast-growing gentrification. She produced and directed the series 9.99, for which she won a NY Emmy. Her work has been funded by the Ford Foundation, Field of Vision, IDA, Perspective, Fork Films and ITVS. Her first feature-length documentary, Dear Thirteen, premiered at DOC NYC in 2022. Her second feature, Fire Through Dry Grass co-directed with Andres “Jay” Molina, will air on PBS in 2023. She is a Sundance Institute Documentary Film Grantee and holds a BA from Brown University and an MA in Media Studies from The New School.

Trina Rodriguez – Editor, Producer

Trina Rodriguez is a filmmaker living in Queens. She is the co-creator, co-director, producer and editor of the documentary series Neighborhood Slice, which spanned three seasons and was broadcast weekly on public television. Trina produced the feature-length documentary High Tech, Low Life, about citizen journalists in China that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and aired on the acclaimed PBS series, POV. She edited Black in America: Black and Blue, a feature documentary about the impact of aggressive policing tactics on the lives of young black men, which aired on CNN. Her short documentary Our Lady Queen of Harlem premiered at MoMA's Documentary Fortnight and is distributed by Third World Newsreel. Most recently she has edited films that tell stories about LGBTQ+ rights and the struggles of young women in Baltimore City, and produced a series on the choreographer Alvin Ailey for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Her work has appeared in Newsweek, New York Magazine, on PBS and a variety of nonprofit and documentary broadcast platforms.

Alex Murawski – Co-Producer

Alex wrote and directed the short films Kiss, Ari, Frail, and Snow which have screened at 90 film festivals, including Berlin and TIFF, and have won multiple awards worldwide. Together they have 7 million online views. He is a winner of the Lexus Australia Film Fellowship and is mentored by Academy-nominated director Bruce Beresford. His feature scripts have placed as Finalists in several screenwriting competitions, including the Nicholl Fellowship. Dear Thirteen is his first feature documentary production.

Making The Film

When I was thirteen, some kids from my neighborhood stole my diary and I never got it back. Years later, my memories are vague but I have a deep, lasting feeling that this was the most important year of my life, the one that formed who I am today.

A decade of teaching documentary filmmaking to middle schoolers only confirmed my feelings about this seminal age – it is transformative and deeply magical. Beyond the hormones and physical changes, it is the age we start to become aware of the larger world around us, and begin to solidify a worldview that will carry us forward into our adult lives. It is a pivotal time to be exposed to new perspectives and different ways of living, to confront stereotypes and challenge previously held views. Strangely, despite the universality of this time, I never had the right material to show my students. There are many wonderful films about important topics, but rarely any from the point of view of young people themselves.

And so I made this film for young people just like my students. It is a chance for them to see their own experiences on screen reflected back to them, and to live for a few moments in worlds they had not known before. It is also, I suppose, a love letter to my thirteen-year-old self.