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Logline

A woman finds out she is pregnant after a string of previous miscarriages. Fearful she will miscarry again, she cycles through questions of time, loss, and liminality. Navigating unexpected territory, BLACK BOX explores the tenuous and mysterious early weeks of pregnancy, where life and death coexist.

Synopsis

BLACK BOX is an experimental, essayistic documentary that explores the phenomena of early pregnancy and miscarriage. The film seeks not to explain miscarriage but rather to immerse the viewer within the disquieting experience of it. What does it feel like to be stuck between two radically different states – either growing a new life, or feeling that life vanish inside you?

The film is structured as a journey investigating central questions around time, grief, risk, invisibility, and the unknown. These stories and spaces are held together through the perspective of the filmmaker and narrator, as she grapples with the expectation of a miscarriage in her first trimester. Her first two pregnancies were a rare type of pregnancy called a molar pregnancy – where two sperm fertilize an egg, and the body responds by growing a tumor instead of a placenta. Now, she must confront this bizarre combination of life and death, sparking an investigation into what it means to conceive, and how we as humans deal with the unknown and invisible.

The film will occur in 5-6 main chapters, each representing a week of pregnancy: Haley receives her 8th round of chemo, to treat her own molar pregnancy that turned cancerous. // Blobs of color twirl in blackness on a computer screen. These synthetic embryos have been engineered in a lab in order to study the “black box” of pregnancy – the earliest moments of life, otherwise imperceptible. // A doula in Texas helps women manage their miscarriages. Because of the state’s anti-abortion laws, women experiencing miscarriages suffer from delayed access to care, to dangerous consequence. // A therapist leads a group session for women in the throes of their pregnancy losses. // We wander through a Jizo garden in Tokyo, where women knit red hats for tiny statues that represent babies lost in pregnancy.
 

Meet the Filmmakers

Annie Marr — Filmmaker
Annie Marr is a San Francisco-based documentary filmmaker. She is a 2024 SFFILM FilmHouse resident and Film Independent Producing Lab Fellow. Her produced and directed works have screened at Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, IDFA, Camden, the UN, and on the New York Times Op-Docs channel. Annie produced and co-edited “not even for a moment do things stand still,” which won special jury recognition at SXSW 2022 and was acquired by the New York Times. Her first interactive film, “Labyrinth,” premiered at IDFA in the DocLab Competition for Digital Storytelling. She directed “death and her compass,” about a death doula in rural Maine, which screened at the 2021 Camden International Film Festival and is featured as a Vimeo Staff Pick, and “Small Family, Happy Family,” about female sterilization and population control in India, which screened at the United Nations. She has also worked as a story producer and associate producer on projects for Netflix and Amazon. She holds an MFA from Stanford University in Documentary Film, and a BA from Dartmouth College in Film/Media Studies and Philosophy

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Contact

For inquiries, please contact fiscalsponsorship@filmindependent.org.