We're excited to announce that our upcoming short film, Ibuprofen is currently in pre-production with plans to shoot in the spring of 2o26. We're anxious to share more of the project as time goes on, but for now, take a moment to take a gander at what we've got planned!
Meet our wonderful team. Excitement doesn't even begin to encompass how we're feeling about reuniting with some of longtime collaborators for this special project.
Avery Gann / Co-Director
Avery Gann is an Austin-based filmmaker that specializes in disability storytelling—centralizing characters commonly overlooked. With degrees in both Film and English Literature from UT Austin, her films carry a complexity of the human experience strengthened by a foundation in movie making and storytelling craft. Her most notable directing credits include a heartfelt short on disability and Deafness, Safe and Sound (2024) and a short on pregnancy in young women, Three Minutes (2023). Avery believes this film will shine a light on the harsh reality of womanhood in a world where speaking about female pain is often discouraged and overlooked.
Athená Polymenis / Co-Director & Director of Photography
Athená Polymenis is a Dallas-based filmmaker that focuses on stories with thematics of ideology, family, and culture. She currently works at Panavision as a Marketing Assistant / Client Contact. In addition to directing, Polymenis has been pushing her visual storytelling skills to new heights. Her recent cinematographic work can be seen in MFA dogma film “fools” and MFA Pre-Thesis film “Team Sports.” Polymenis is excited to collaborate with Gann on Ibuprofen and explore the visual language of the film.
Katherine Creevy / Producer
Katherine Creevy is a Dallas-based filmmaker with a focus on highlighting narratives that historically receive less screen-time. While pursuing two Bachelors of Science in both Radio-Television-Film and Advertising at the University of Texas at Austin, she gained directing, assistant-directing, and producing experience from working with her fellow filmmakers on numerous short films, including FaithFul (2023), Safe & Sound (2024), and Moradilla (2024). As a mixed Vietnamese woman, she loves to work on films that prioritize underrepresented characters and relationship dynamics.
Lily Klar / Casting Director
Lily Klar is a filmmaker and casting director born and raised in Austin, TX. Through her work, Lily strives to offer meaningful representation of women, POC and queer identities— all of which she holds close. Most recently, she worked on casting for Se Lo Merecía, a coming-of-age short that follows two young, Latino boys as they navigate their cultural differences. Currently, Lily is a Casting Assistant at Vicky Boone Casting, a local full-service casting company in Austin.
Caroline Plumb / Gaffer
Caroline Plumb is an Austin-based freelance gaffer. She recently graduated from UT with a degree in Radio-TV-Film. Her most recent work has been on MFA Thesis “Bread N’ Buttta” and Olympian Erica Sullivan’s short film “Wet Season”. This will be the third project that Caroline and Athená have collaborated on. Past works include “The Homeland” and “The Immaculate Deception”. Plumb is excited to be a part of this team, passionate about the importance of the story being told and enthusiastic about the visual language being used to tell it.
We're also extremely pleased to be working with Tatum Ostos again for our editing and coloring needs, as well as Evan Sherer for our sound design and mixing.
Elena waits patiently on the exam table at her gynecologists office. After some quick discourse on the IUD options available to Elena, Dr. Gates moves forward with the insertion. It’s only after the procedure that Dr. Gates realizes the ibuprofen was never administered.
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Ibuprofen is a short film that aims to highlight a female experience that is frequently undercut and undervalued as a moment that desires attention and care. The story is simple, and we don't want it to be anything other than straight forward.
Beyond addressing female care - we also want to highlight female pain. Our protagonist, Elena (20), is taking on a new realm. A realm often shroud in fear and learned about through the grapevine of friends, family members, and social media. These methods of learning are unstable and sometimes unreliable which leads Elena to enter her appointment with a solid sense of hesitancy.
The procedure she's signed up for is probably, unknowingly, one of the most invasive she'll experience - and she'll be doing it unmedicated. Elena is lucky to have a female doctor caring for her, one who approaches her with care and kindness. Dr. Gates does what she can to fill in the gaps that Elena presents, but no one can answer the things we don't ask. But it goes both ways - how can we get answers for questions we're never taught to ask?
The procedure is quick, but Elena quickly spirals as the pain becomes too much. Is this what she should just endure, just get over it and walk out like nothing happened? Sometimes it feels like we should just move on, and most do. But who's responsible for treating the pain, and should we really keep on keeping on?
For the visual approach, we want to harness the tension of the story through one shot. As Elena's procedure heightens, she begins to recede into herself feeling and viscerally experiencing the procedure. We want to match that narrowing of her scope and put her right in the center where she belongs. To accomplish this we'll be pushing the camera in slowly throughout the duration of the story to emulate Elena's focus on herself as she copes with the pain.
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The tightness and closeness of certain sequences in Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), as well as the topic of the film, are a close comp for how the camera will gradually close on our protagonist as she becomes more and more detached from the situation.
An additional stylistic comp is Adolescence (2025). Their one take one shot, per episode, mini series is a close inspiration for the camera approach we're taking.
Our visual approach also takes after dogma filmmaking. Dogma is a practice that strives to strip away cinematic artifice while finding truth in the filmmaking process. Polymenis has had the privilege of observing and shooting dogma films over the past two years. Her work on MFA dogma film, Fools (2024) has had a great impact on her visual approach which she intends to bring to Ibuprofen. "It was all about the story and you really get to work those pivoting muscles which is quite handy."
We want to be ready to ebb and flow with the nature of our story, our outlined visual approach will help us accomplish just that.
So what now?
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We're still in the development phase of our short, which means we're still fine tuning our script and production plans. We're also still securing our funding to make sure we can provide the best filmmaking resources and experience to our wonderful cast and crew. There's no crowdfunding campaign in the works as of yet, but please head on over to our instagram page @oniriosfilms to keep tabs on the progress of our short film!
