Filmmakers: What is your primary skill and where do you work most?
Norcal Directing, Writer Norcal
My current Project Title:
Guiding Light
About me - current project:
India Mitchell discovered her love of storytelling through filmmaking in middle school when her school in California changed to an online format for one year. At that time, India used an old cellphone to shoot footage about her dramatically changing world. India's first student film, "Capes", was about everyday heroes, and it was honored at film festivals in Northern California in 2022. Her second student film, "The Innocent", was about misidentification in a criminal trial with courtroom scenes, and it received many recognitions and was shown at film festivals around the world in 2023. In her third student film, "Guiding Light", released in April 2024, India highlights a stranger abduction case involving a teen (Polly Klaas) of the same age from her town, Petaluma, that rocked the nation thirty years earlier.
Through the compelling interviews of the lead prosecutor, the defense attorney and the police chief, “Guiding Light” tells the story of a young teen (Polly Hannah Klaas) in a small town in America who was kidnapped from her bedroom during a slumber party while her family was in the house. In "Guiding Light", India Mitchell, a teen growing up in the same town thirty years later brings a fresh perspective and highlights the importance of the legacy of this case to the continuing endeavor to keep children safe.
