Today we’d like to introduce you to Mackenzie Leigh & Ryan Ward.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
We are a husband and wife team who run a production company called Memory Pill in Los Angeles and Manitoba, Canada and have worked together for the past decade with a focus on original, director-driven films.
We just premiered Ryan’s new feature, DAUGHTER OF THE SUN, at Fantasia Film Festival, North America’s top genre festival, and found out that we won an Audience Award for Best Canadian Feature Film.
It is a touching father-daughter road trip drama with a poetic, magic realist tone about a 12-year-old girl and her dad who has Tourette Syndrome. Her dad also has a secret, volatile supernatural power that she is starting to inherit.
We were also notified that our film short, TIME TRAVELING THROUGH TIME, won the sci-fi award at Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival. Ranked as one of the Top 10 Film Festivals in the United States, Flickers is one of 19 festivals worldwide that is qualifying for the Oscars® in both narrative and documentary shorts.
In the same week as Ryan’s premiere, we also premiered Mackenzie’s directorial debut, HEALER, in New York at Stony Brook Film Festival. It follows a young woman who grapples with the untimely death of her sister, seeking comfort in an imagined reality where they grew up together. It was our second time screening at Stony Brook and it’s one of our favorite festivals for the incredible audience turnout and unparalleled hospitality toward filmmakers.
We were also invited to pitch our new feature film, PURE SCIENCE FICTION, at Frontières International Co-Production Market in Montreal, which is an industry forum organized by Fantasia in collaboration with the Cannes Film Festival that attracts industry reps from around the globe. It was a great opportunity to meet with high-level distributors and sales agents who support innovative storytelling and present our upcoming work.
And all of this happened the same week as our wedding anniversary, which we think can only be good luck!
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
We embrace the stark contrast of operating a company in two countries and find inspiration in the extremes of both worlds. LA is a hot city that pulsates with an in-your-face energy and a fast pace, and we are creatively motivated by the vibrant chaos. On the other hand, Manitoba’s cold weather slows us down and gives us a different sense of time. You really have to have a steadfast resolve against the elements, and the solitude of winter provides the opportunity for us to reflect. It’s a great place to write and develop our projects.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
At Memory Pill, we are inspired by cinema’s golden age of the 60s and 70s when artists like Scorsese, Coppola, Varda, Lumet, Schlesinger, Friedkin, and Dennis Hopper were given the freedom to roam the industry with unbridled creative expression, making art that pushed boundaries and challenged norms. It was a unique era when film executives recognized the power of daring voices and courageously backed their projects that captivated audiences.
Now at a time when studios and big businesses dominate and the voices of independent creators often struggle to be heard, we strive to reignite that same spirit and see ourselves as an oasis for those who dream differently. Our films are not bound by commercial constraints but are born from a deep well of creativity and a desire to challenge conventional narratives.
We celebrate the weird, the offbeat, the dark horse, the black sheep. We know that there is an audience for original perspectives and that these stories are often the ones that capture the zeitgeist of the times and make a lasting impression on audience’s hearts.
After Fantasia and Frontières, we are heading to Los Angeles to shoot a new movie and then will be filming another feature in Manitoba.
It has been a very busy few years. We are so happy with what we have accomplished, but also dream about taking some much-needed time off. We want to drive a van around the country with our greyhound and our emails set to ‘out of office’. We may even plaster our Memory Pill logo on the side so we can still do a little advertising on the road (always hustling)!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.memorypillfilms.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/memorypillfilms
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/memorypillfilms
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/memorypillfilms
Image Credits
All photos courtesy of Vinh Pham.
