WINGSPAN MEDIA PARTNERS presents A film by Ellie Dylan and Sky Dylan-Robbins 82 Minutes | U.S.A. | English | Color Official Selections / Awards Sedona International Film Festival (Audience Choice & Independent Spirit Awards, Best Documentary) Heartland International Film Festival Maui Film Festival Spirit International Film Festival, Tel Aviv Santa Monica International Film Festival Malibu International Film Festival Buffalo International Film Festival Manhattan Film Festival (Film Heals Award, Best Documentary) Anchorage International Film Festival (Jury Award, Best Documentary) Vancouver International Film Festival NewFilmmakers New York Vail Film Festival Los Angeles Women’s International Film Festival Kansas City FilmFest International Rhode Island International Film Festival (Semi-Finalist, Documentary) Hot Springs International Women’s Film Festival Press Contact NY / Nat’l: Wingspan Media Partners (212) 385-9500 [email protected] www.onourownisland.com SYNOPSES Logline A timeless true love story that chronicles the seasons of a relationship from its romantic beginnings through life’s final moments. Short Synopsis ON OUR OWN ISLAND is a timeless true love story that chronicles the seasons of a relationship from its romantic beginnings through life’s final moments. With this remarkable documentary, award-winning mother-daughter filmmakers Ellie Dylan and Sky Dylan-Robbins present a tender and intimate look at the enduring power of true love and the gifts revealed in what matters most. Like a fairytale only fiction can fathom, this inspiring nonfiction love story enters the world at just the right time. While the pandemic places the impermanence of life smack in our collective faces, ON OUR OWN ISLAND awakens and heals with its heartwarming tale about love, life, and the profound dance to the end. Long Synopsis Fifty years after the release of the iconic movie “Love Story” comes ON OUR OWN ISLAND, an intimate and uplifting documentary that chronicles a real-life romance from its fateful beginnings through its unexpected, untimely end. With a storyline that seems right out of a narrative feature, ON OUR OWN ISLAND navigates the seasons of a relationship to reveal the hidden secrets, struggles, and gifts to be found in true love and in life’s final moments. The story begins on a completely deserted Zuma Beach in Malibu, California. Ellie lies on a towel, her bare feet swirling the sand as she pages through a book. She had come to the beach in search of solitude and answers she’d hoped to find at the water’s edge. It’s a perfect summer day. The waves kiss the shore as a flock of seagulls look on. Then, as she glances up towards the ocean, he appears: a tall, handsome young man, slowly and splendidly rising out of the water. Time stands still as their eyes meet and Steven strides towards her. He smiles, and she, book still in hand, puts it down and smiles back. So began Ellie and Steven’s romance, like a fairytale that only fiction can fathom. Over the years, Steven wrote hundreds of love letters to Ellie, chronicling their life together – a life he 2 always described as taking place on their own island. Indeed, that first fateful day on the beach lived in their hearts for decades; their love was true, endless, and singular – a love they thought would last forever. But what happens when a love story comes to a close, and how is it possible to navigate that end together? ON OUR OWN ISLAND is a deeply intimate, honest, and uplifting nonfiction love story — a story for our times. While the pandemic places the impermanence of life smack in our collective faces and cities experience a mass exodus to the hills, ON OUR OWN ISLAND takes viewers inside the journey as one family does just that. Called “a balm for our times,” ON OUR OWN ISLAND inspires and heals with its heartwarming tale about love, life, and the profound dance to the end. Warning: While the film is a powerful love story, please note that one of the lead characters has a peaceful, natural death on camera, gracefully shown. 3 ABOUT THE PRODUCTION The production of ON OUR OWN ISLAND was serendipitous from beginning to end. Its co-directors, award-winning mother-daughter journalists Ellie Dylan and Sky Dylan-Robbins, were from the onset swept up in the serendipity of how this film came to be. By the time production began on ON OUR OWN ISLAND, Ellie already had decades of experience in the media and Sky had become an accomplished journalist as well. When a terminal diagnosis for Steven Robbins (their husband and father, respectively) upended their lives, the family decided to film its journey, never imagining that events would unfold as they did. Ellie and Sky had the journalistic skills but gave each other the strength; the camera became invisible as they supported each other and Steven through this unforgettable experience. Ellie and Steven shared the kind of love that’s sought after, pined for, poetically written about, and yet rarely found. What began as a chance encounter on a deserted beach in Malibu turned into a decades-long romance in New York that mirrors Hollywood’s greatest love stories — with a final act that tenderly and intimately sheds light on life’s most feared and universal passage. It’s this fairytale-like love story that’s at the heart of ON OUR OWN ISLAND, a strikingly poignant first feature documentary from veteran journalists Ellie Dylan and Sky Dylan-Robbins. It’s a film about love and death — the death of a poetic soul, of a storybook romance, and of a family that will never again be as it was before... and about the love that endured throughout it all. It’s a film that is coincidentally entering the world at a time when death is on everyone’s minds and what matters most is in everyone’s hearts. It’s a film for everyone: everyone who’s lost someone or will lose someone they’ve loved and will themselves die one day. Actors Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw turned a journey such as this into an unforgettable experience for an entire generation in the epic 1970’s romance “Love Story.” It was a classic Hollywood tale with a heart-wrenching ending that seemed the stuff that only fiction can fathom. Yet on the fiftieth anniversary of this memorable movie, ON OUR OWN ISLAND appears with a similar real-life romance that seems written just for the big screen. When their thirty-three year idyllic marriage was turned upside down by Steven’s terminal diagnosis, the family began searching for ways to heal him, thinking all the while that he would somehow beat the odds and overcome his dire prognosis. When it became obvious that Steven’s death was looming, the family’s focus shifted to finding ways to make his end-of-life experience peaceful and consistent with the values they held dear. Astonished when their search came up empty, and with Steven’s encouragement, the family decided to film its journey so that others could benefit from the answers they were so desperately determined to find. 4 While Ellie and Steven had spent most of their marriage in New York City, four years prior to Steven’s diagnosis, they decided to completely change their life from urban to rural and move to a farm in upstate New York. Although their only child, Sky, continued living in the city, she joined the family at the farm as Steven’s illness took a turn for the worse. As his days became numbered and his time on earth grew shorter, Steven began to say that there was no more perfect place to have cancer than in the exquisite, serene backdrops that nature provided on their farm. Indeed, the seasons around them perfectly mirrored the seasons unfolding in Steven’s life, in his marriage to Ellie, and in the family he so dearly loved. It was the transformational beauty of nature’s seasons that influenced not only the production style of the film but also its genesis. In the fall of 2014, as the brightly colored leaves of autumn started their voyage to the ground, Sky grabbed her camera and Ellie her clipboard. Together, they began documenting the family’s — and Steven’s — journey as the end of his life and the end of the family’s life, as they knew it, were coming to a close. Thirty seven years apart in age, and from two very different generations, these award-winning mother-daughter journalists soon found themselves in uncharted waters, both as filmmakers and as family members. Faced with watching someone they love deteriorate before their eyes and with life’s most feared yet inevitable passage looming on the horizon, Ellie and Sky decided to avoid bringing in any outside camera crews so that the intimacy of the family’s remaining time together could be preserved. “The shooting style of the film was really determined by the mobility of my dad who had always been a strong and athletic guy. In the beginning, when he was still very much himself in the spring and summer, we were able to capture the vibrant life we shared together on the farm using a variety of gear and shooting styles.” said Sky Dylan-Robbins, co-director of ON OUR OWN ISLAND. “But as Steven began to decline and his death became imminent, nothing was more important to us than to be totally present for him at every moment. During the last part of his life in the dead of winter, each day was more powerful and all-consuming than anything we’d ever experienced.