The world’s first midlife school – designed to give people the tools, practices, and support to navigate midlife challenges and thrive in the second half of life.
Modern Elder Academy brought us in to make a short documentary highlighting their newly built campus in New Mexico.
Cool. But we knew that we weren’t interested in a normal “brand video.” Most of what MEA teaches already lives online in a hundred different formats so they didn’t need more of that. They needed cinema. The kind of thing that actually makes someone feel something.
So we embedded with one cohort for a full week. Captured the whole arc, strangers showing up stuck and masked, leaving with something real. Then we built the narrative that we filmed around, cut the film, and developed the positioning and festival strategy around it. What started as a ranch spotlight turned into a short documentary about the most overlooked demographic in America.
Film Production
Positioning
Art Direction
Festival Strategy
Graphics
(Watch the trailer)
Director Statement
by Adam Lancaster
When I first showed up in Santa Fe, I had just spent the previous 5 years starting my own midlife journey. Empty nester, break-up, career change. My friend Dan Landes, who’s been on a parallel track with me as a father, creator, and human trying to evolve, told me about the Modern Elder Academy and the work happening at the ranch. “It’s science-backed and ‘woo’ adjacent” he would say. This spoke to me as someone leaving nihilism behind as I reconnected with my own spirituality that I’d ignored for so long as a recovered Catholic.
What surprised me was how, in a single week, people would transform from the stuckness of life that we end up at in midlife. Disillusioned by society success scripts that no longer serve us, if they ever really did. Unable to envision how a fulfilling life at this stage is even possible. And at the end of their week, they literally looked like new people. Unrecognizable. Laughing, playing, hugging. There was joy in the place of apathy. Hope in the place of despair. They were beautiful.
After going through my own midlife journey, and watching friends and family struggle through theirs (and some who never made it), I knew this was the story I need to tell. People need to know that there are answers out there. Our society is sick and extractive.
Learning about the founder of Modern Elder Academy, Chip Conley confirmed it for me. While very successful in his 20s-30s, he’s open about how messy things got for him in midlife. Spoiler: he died. And coming out of that the way he did, and committing himself to helping others through it as well is one of the great philanthropic stories of our life right now and yet, we still don’t talk about mid-life.
It’s a public health issue. Life and death. So here it is. Rising from the Middle. We have to talk about it.
Not bad, right?
This could be you. Let’s talk. 30 minutes, zero pitch energy. Worst case, free advice.