Award-winning filmmaker Sonia Lowman to direct Empathy, a short film about one careless moment rippling through six strangers. Now live on Kickstarter.
LOS ANGELES, CA, UNITED STATES, February 24, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Rakhma Productions has announced that award-winning filmmaker Sonia Lowman will direct Empathy, a short film created and produced by Lucani Entertainment. The project is now in active pre-production, with a Kickstarter campaign launched today to fund the three-day Southern California shoot.
Empathy follows a single act of rudeness in a coffee shop as it passes invisibly through six strangers over the course of one day. Each character unknowingly transfers their emotional hurt to the next person they encounter, until the chain circles back to where it started. The original victim has become the very thing that hurt her. The film uses a circular narrative structure with minimal dialogue, allowing the emotional weight to carry through body language and small gestures rather than exposition.
Lowman brings over 20 years of experience in documentary filmmaking and social impact media. Her directorial credits include Black Boys (NBC Peacock, 2020), executive produced by NFL player Malcolm Jenkins; Teach Us All (Netflix, 2017), acquired and distributed by Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY; and War and Grace (2020), which received the WHO Grand Prix. Her most recent films, War and Grace and Indomitable (2024), were both narrated by Sienna Miller with original music by Ben Harper. Lowman also serves as the principal filmmaker for International Medical Corps, operating in over 30 countries affected by war and disaster.
The Kickstarter campaign offers reward tiers ranging from end credits recognition to an Executive Producer credit with a full-day set visit. The film’s production budget is $15,355, covering a three-day shoot across five Southern California locations with a cast of seven.
Empathy has been submitted to multiple screenwriting competitions and grant programs, including The Film Fund, Shore Scripts Short Film Fund, PAGE International Screenwriting Awards, and the Roy W. Dean Grant. The film is being developed for the festival circuit with distribution planned following its Southern California premiere.
Empathy at IMDb: https://pro.imdb.com/title/tt39922332
Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lucanientertainment/empathy-hurt-people-hurt-people
Sonia Lowman: https://www.sonialowman.com/
Lucani Entertainment: https://www.lucanient.com/
Rakhma Productions: https://www.rakhmaproductions.com/
Mike Wood
Rakhma Productions
+1 909-552-1916
email us here
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