FREE TO RUN FEATURE - STORY BRIEF

A Dream Lens Media Film

Directed by: Carrie Highman, Tim Highman

Dream Lens Media directors Carrie and Tim Highman began conceptualizing a film on Stephanie Case and the women of her NGO, Free to Run, back in 2019. Over the following two years, the story they set out to tell would ebb and flow resulting in production beginning the summer of 2021. What they couldn’t have anticipated was the dramatic shift their documentary would take when the Taliban swiftly took over Afghanistan, sparking chaos as thousands of Afghans tried to flee and NGO’s and governments struggled to evacuate staff. What started as a film on the progress Afghan women had made through sports with the support of NGO’s like Free to Run, quickly turned into a film about whether or not groups like Free to Run could survive the Taliban takeover and whether all the Afghan women had accomplished in the past two decades would be erased overnight.

The film will center on Free to Run founder Stephanie Case and Free to Run Afghans who have been part of the NGO for years. Hasina is a prime example of a strong Afghan woman who was leading the way for other women in her country through sports. Hasina was one of the women evacuated during the chaos that unfolded after the Taliban took over Kabul on August 15, 2021. We have footage of Steph coordinating with her from Chamonix to find a way to evacuate her and other staff members. Whatsapp voice memos, text messages, videos that Hasina was sending to Steph on the ground and video clips of Steph talking with Hasina on speaker phone will all be used to tell the evacuation story. Hasina is now in Toronto, Canada which will allow for our production team to interview her about her experience, the future that lies ahead and help us build out her back story and what her life was like growing up in Afghanistan. Rahmat is a Pashtun male staff member for Free to Run. We have footage of him with Stephanie in Afghanistan a month before the takeover as they made plans for how to protect sensitive documents should the Taliban come to power. We also have Whatsapp communication between him and Steph as the chaos was unfolding in Kabul and he is now in St. Louis, Missouri, which will allow our team to interview him fully and capture his thoughts on the future. He is still working for Free to Run remotely and his insight will be valuable in understanding the male perspective on the work Free to Run does, especially as a Pashtun male.

Additional characters include Zahra and Zeinab, two alumni of Free to Run and one a former staff member of Free to Run. We have footage of Stephanie training with them in Kabul a month before the takeover and their conflicting perspectives of whether or not Afghanistan would fall will create an additional powerful element to the narrative. 

Stephanie’s world is multifaceted but all tied together with the same underpinning of human rights and running. We’ll frame up her work with civilian protection for the UN on the ground in Afghanistan using footage she self-documented as well as AP archives of UN reports on civilian casualties and archived footage of Afghanistan the last couple of years. Understanding Stephanie’s passion for human rights is essential to see how all elements of her life weave together, compliment each other and lead to the creation of Free to Run. We’ll build out Stephanie’s relationship with mountain ultra running, as it began during her time working for the UN in Afghanistan as a coping mechanism to deal with the stress that accompanied her job. Free to Run is the child of her two passions, human rights and running. Her purpose in racing around the world is to create visibility for women in the mountains where they are underrepresented, whether it be in the Italian Alps or in a place like Afghanistan. We’ll then build out the character of Free to Run, introducing Hasina, Rahmat, Zahra and Zeinab and bringing in cultural context to why women running outside was such an audacious thing to do in Afghanistan at the time. By demonstrating what they risked and accomplished over the last 5 years, we’ll be able to build the intensity of whether or not Free to Run can survive after the Taliban takeover.

The story will be told linearly. Starting with Stephanie’s backstory with the UN, building out the sport of ultra mountain running so a wide-reaching audience can quickly learn about the sport and engage in what an extreme endeavor it is, and then tell the story of Free to Run. We’ll follow the events as they unfolded in 2021, as the expedition was canceled, Steph raced into Kabul to meet with staff and then in August worked remotely from her home in Chamonix to help evacuate her team from Afghanistan. Viewers will be pulled into the evacuation process from both Steph’s perspective and Hasina and Rahmat’s. We’ll then continue on to tell the story of her massive feat of racing Tor des Glaciers, one of the longest non-stop trail races in the world, just weeks after evacuating her team, placing in the top three overall and first place woman. Tor des Glaciers is not to be underestimated. It is an example of one of the hardest ultra trail mountain races in the world and will provide a powerful backdrop to the sport and Steph’s mentality to tackling seemingly impossible feats.

We’ll follow Hasina and Rahmat in Canada and the U.S. as they build their new lives abroad and we’ll follow through to a year after the takeover in 2022 and the reality Free to Run is facing on the ground in Afghanistan.

Overseeing the cultural content of the film will be Dr. Zahra Nader. If needed to add credibility and context to the situation in Afghanistan we will interview her for the film. If not needed, she will be a resource reviewing the film content, score, etc.