Austin filmmaker Lauren Lindberg has until July 30 to fund the final stretch of production on Fall of the Phoenix, a documentary about brain injury survivors five years in the making. The Seed&Spark campaign, launched June 30, must hit 80 percent of its $20,000 goal or the platform returns every pledge. As of July 15, halfway through the fundraising period, Lindberg sits at 65 percent.
The film follows four people navigating life after a brain injury, utilizing a "magical realism" style, says Lindberg, to depict what an invisible condition looks like from the inside. It tells their stories all the way from their fall to their rise again, like a phoenix.
Three of the film's four main subjects have brain injuries; the fourth is a parent to someone with a brain injury. Marchell Taylor, a man incarcerated in Denver, faces a 300-year sentence. A screening program at the Denver County Jail has identified a brain injury likely driving his repeat offenses. Two subjects are from Alaska: Dr. Adam Grove, a brain injury physician and survivor himself, and Alex Mortenson, a Yupik mother and advocate whose daughter has cycled between a psychiatric institute and incarceration for a decade since two car accidents. And in Connecticut, Dr. Ivette Ruiz sustained a brain injury during Hurricane Isaias and has turned to gardening as a rehabilitation practice.
Lindberg says production is about 75 percent complete, with Taylor's story totally filmed. But this leaves two people in Alaska and one in Connecticut to catch up with.
"Funds from the campaign will cover flights, crew costs, lodging, food, specialty equipment for some of the magical realism moments," says Lindberg, adding that filming really can't wait. "[The stories] are all seasonal. So we can't miss these windows."
Lindberg has experience in documentary projects, having attended film school and produced several documentary works, including explorations of personal finance and tech, and a short talk about mortality with Andrea Gibson, the well-known spoken word artist who died in 2025.
Lindberg has developed a close relationship with her Fall of the Phoenix contacts over the five years she's already spent filming, but her connection to the material runs even deeper than that.
Her younger sister, a Division I athlete, medically retired after 12 consecutive concussions. A cousin suffered a traumatic brain injury in a swimming accident. And while researching this film, Lindberg pieced together her own history: falls as a competitive cheerleader, and an assault that knocked her unconscious before film school. Doctors diagnosed her with various mental health conditions at the time, but "nobody ever said concussion," she says.
Lindberg says this gap — not knowing you've had a brain injury, and thus not connecting it to mental health or decision-making — extends far beyond her own family.
"How many other people are knowingly or unknowingly living lives that are disconnected from themselves and their purpose, because we don't have the awareness and the information?" Lindberg asks.
She notes that this pattern is especially common in the prison population, where an undiagnosed brain injury can quietly steer mental health and decision-making for years. Taylor's story exemplifies that, she says.
"There is no federal response plan for brain injury like there is for Parkinson's, or dementia, or cancer," says Lindberg. "So the goal for this film is to be an awareness tool, but also it's an impact campaign. We're partnering with a lot of the brain health organizations ... so that we can impact legislation."
Austinites who want to support this local filmmaker have until July 30 at 11:11 pm to spread the word or donate. Once funding is secured, Lindberg says the team plans on wrapping production this year. Then they'll take 2027 for post-production work, and they hope to do a festival run before the film's 2028 release.
"I never thought I was gonna make a film again," Lindberg says, after her own brain injury. "And so on a personal level, it's very exciting to be here."
