EVERABLE

We were so honored to present our film, On Loneliness, at the @unitednations this week. Thank you @downsyndromeinternational for gathering so many incredible advocates to stand Together Against Loneliness. We’re already looking forward to next year’s @worlddownsyndromeday Thank you, Ricky & Crisely, for representing our community so incredibly for this historic moment. In this video, Ricky & Crisely are on a panel with Ambassadors Norberto Moretti of Brazil, Umetsu Shigeru of Japan, Krzysztof Szczerski of Poland, and Beth Delaney of Australia, moderated by Bridget Snedden, DSI Board President. #disability #downsyndrome #unitednations #loneliness

On Loneliness is going to the UNITED NATIONS in New York City!!! 😆🙃🥹🥰 We could not be more thrilled to present our short film during the opening ceremony of World Down Syndrome Day at the United Nations headquarters this year. On Loneliness helped inspire this year’s theme, Together Against Loneliness. Thank you Down Syndrome International, for bringing together self-advocates and other experts with governments, UN officials, and NGO representatives to talk about human rights issues for people with disabilities. We’re looking forward to learning from others around the world on this important topic and making even more ✨ Friendships Across Difference ✨ #WorldDownSyndromeDay #UnitedNations #DownSyndrome #DisabilityRights @worlddownsyndromeday @downsyndromeinternational @unitednations

In 2008, I worked in Bugembe, Uganda, where the Lusoga dictionary had just been completed—but it had no word for disability. Two million speakers—and no word. There was a word for madness, but not disability. I wondered: how does the absence of a word shape the fate of a people? Over the years, I’ve interviewed people with disabilities in many languages. Each one shifts me. In French I grow philosophical, in Swahili elliptical, in Spanish open and friendly, in English precise. But most of the time, I sit with people whose languages I cannot reach. There are about 7,159 living languages. Only 23 are “majority languages”—spoken by more than 50 million people—yet those few account for over half the world’s population. The other 7,136 are “minority languages”—spoken daily, but largely invisible on our screens, in our feeds, and at our policy tables. I call this the Mother-Tongue Paradox: dignity lies in speaking one’s first language, yet global power still flows through translated tongues. Too often, voices that should have traveled end up stranded on hard drives, silenced a second time. But this year we found a way forward. With Hollyland headsets, Sony recorders, Atomos, Frame.io, and an Eco-flow solar-powered Starlink, we can now capture both the original language and the live interpretation—sending it to editors worldwide in near real time, even from a village with no electricity. It isn’t perfect, but it means voices once slowed or silenced can now travel quickly, intact. One more way of saying: every disabled voice belongs in the record. Deep thanks to the scholars, leaders, technologists, filmmakers, and organizations—@frame_io , @atomos.global , @sonycine , @ecoflowtech , @hollylandtech —who helped make this possible. AND to @dookhie , whose photos caught the spirit of our work better my words could.

What if the cure for loneliness is right in front of us?
Tag the person who pushed a cloud from your life and share this short film forward. Keep the convo going 👉 link in bio for making-of details and more. Video Description Overview: On Loneliness is a 7-minute film exploring loneliness and friendship through five vignettes in three acts. For scene-by-scene visual descriptions, go to larche-gwdc.org/on-loneliness via link in bio. CC available on YouTube (English · Español · Français) Presented by: L’Arche Greater Washington, D.C. (GWDC)  Produced by: Everable | @distvglobal Written, Directed, Edited & Produced by Michael Joseph McDonald | @michaeljosephmcdonald Producer, Line Producer & Casting Lauren Palmer | @laurnpalm Storyboard Artist & Additional Writing Isabelle Strobel | @sketch__away Director of Photography   Zoe Hertz First Assistant Camera Jane O’Connor | @jane_oco Boom Operator & Grip Reilly McCluskey | @mccluskeyreilly Music Licensed via Artlist What is loving Anymore by Fiona Harte | @fionaharte Remix & Additional Orchestration Pablo Estacio | @pabloestacioc Sound Mixing Luis Huesca | @luis.huescam Color Grading Ryan K. McNeal | @rkmstudios_color Visual Effects Artist Ramon Monsanto | @ramonmonsanto Animation Maryia Dziadziulia | @fps.arts

Wrap Day Reflections Got in from Australia, packed the Sprinter Van, and drove through the night— 13 hours of toll roads, taillights, and two missed turns. Arrived at 4:30 a.m., unloaded gear into the dark. By the next day, we were sketching lighting schemes on iPads, marking stripboards in cafés, chasing shadows and lens caps. There were no guarantees. A garage we used—an hour after the sun was already too high. A subject perfect for the role, but allergic to early mornings. A missing hearing aid. A tripod leg gone rogue. A few extras stuck in traffic. But then— a mirror caught the light just right. A standing table completed the shot. Audrey’s hair held because someone sliced up a paper roll and worked magic with bobby pins. And what I saw—what I felt—was this: Cinema, for those of us behind the lens, is indeed an escape. But not from the world— from the myths that quietly govern it: That you’re alone. That you’re replaceable. That your presence doesn’t alter the shape of things. Before I was a filmmaker, I was a disability support worker. I’ve bathed bodies. Helped people dress. Held people steady in a bathtub. Waited beside someone when there was nothing to fix—only to witness. That taught me how to hold a camera. And how to hold a scene. Directing, the way I practice it, isn’t about control. It’s about accompaniment. About creating a world where every presence reshapes the story. That might sound tender—even precious. But interdependence isn’t sentimental—it’s exacting. When one person stumbles, everyone feels it. But when it clicks— when the operator catches the moment before it slips, when the actor finds a gesture deeper than dialogue, when the boom hits its mark like instinct, when the DP speaks in light like a second language— and the timing, the focus, the intention all lock in— the set lifts. The story breathes. The frame holds. When that happens, that’s more than a good take. It’s a way of being in the world that we rarely get to rehearse. Thank you, @larche_gwdc , for your trust. Not every collaborator is ready for the unpredictability of a cinema of accompaniment. #behindthescenes #disabilityawareness #indiefilm #cinematography #onset

In March of 2025, I carried the Apple Vision Pro through the security gates of the United Nations headquarters in Vienna. Maybe it's just glass and code. But maybe it's a vessel of witness. 130 years earlier, in March 1895, the Lumière brothers placed their invention—the Cinématographe—on the sidewalk outside their factory in Lyon. Cinema was born—not as spectacle, but as a public act of seeing. "Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory" was the first publicly screened film. As I watched world leaders react—some of them stepping into lives they’d never touched, and leaving with eyes they’d never had—I couldn’t help but think of the projectionists of old--wandering from village to village, hauling magic through border towns and broken roads, carrying a small and flickering light in their arms. Cinema wasn’t about content back then. It was about contact. Grateful to @zeroprojectorg for creating space where the world’s most forward-thinking minds in disability policy, design, and justice could come together—not just to imagine new futures, but to co-create them. #applevisionpro #disabilityinclusion

I never imagined that a week of speaking to people about loneliness could involve so much laughter (though there were tears, too). I love writing, but when possible, I prefer to start with unscripted, deep, and creative conversations. In this case, I asked: “What does loneliness taste like?” After a long pause: “Like…sparkling water…after the bubbles run out and you’re like...wait, was that flavored?” If loneliness were a texture? “Sand slipping between the gaps in my fingers.” If it were a sound? “The silence after pushing the ‘end meeting’ button on Zoom.” L’Arche belongs to the rare 3% of charitable nonprofits that have survived for 50+ years. They existed before man landed on the moon, before the maple leaf was on the Canadian flag, and before the internet. What began in a small French village has spread across the globe, changing how society welcomes disability. But the pain that sparked their movement—the question they answered—has grown. L’Arche began as a response to loneliness. In 1964, a neurodiverse man in an institution asked a neurotypical man, “Can you be my friend?” It was a simple, but profound question: Can my life mean something to someone besides myself? L’Arche has tried to say “Yes” to that question for the last 60 years. But the question was never one-sided. The same society that once said, “If you can’t keep up, you belong in a warehouse,” is facing its own isolation crisis. Today, more and more people are asking that same question. The statistics tell the story. The percentage of Americans who say they have no close friends has quadrupled since 1990. And loneliness isn’t just a feeling—it’s a public health crisis, with the Surgeon General claiming it’s as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. This week, Everable traveled to Virginia, recently named the 3rd loneliest state in the U.S., to speak with L’Arche about loneliness, friendship, and the question: Can my life have value to someone else? In their answers, we found not just stories of isolation, but so much hope. L’Arche reminded us that the antidote to loneliness isn’t just good luck—it’s presence, purpose, and being willing to tell someone say, “Yes, your life matters to me.”

In 1974, as an 18-year-old, Grady was caught robbing a South Bend pharmacy with two friends. He received a life sentence, while the two repeat offenders with him got no time and just 18 months. Though willing to confess, Grady, due to his stutter and paralyzing fear of public speaking, asked if there was a way to avoid addressing the entire court. His lawyer told him there wasn’t, but assured him that he’d get a light sentence if he could just overcome his fear and speak to the courtroom. When Grady couldn’t address the courtroom, they saw it as refusal to cooperate, and sentenced him to life without the possibility of parole. We study how light falls on things—not just as an essential part of filmmaking, but because I believe it’s fundamental to the culture of humanization. For Grady, it’s not just about shaping the image, it’s about reclaiming the humanity that was denied to him. His story—from escaping South Bend prison in 1975 (through the vents) to overcoming his stutter (thanks to the help of a fellow inmate) to achieving parole (partly through a letter from Fr. Hesburgh)—reminds us that how we light someone shapes not just how they are seen, but the possibilities of how their story unfolds. We positioned the tripod slightly below him, so the camera looks up to him–to feel the weight of his dignity. The prison lights are cold, harsh fluorescents, but Grady exudes warmth, so I lit his face with soft, warm light. He's still on parole, so the background remains in the same harsh, cold light that once surrounded him. If he moves too far forward or back in his chair, he slips into that incarceral light again. Since he was forced to live as a warehoused human, we held the interview in a space designed for warehousing objects.

Twelve years ago, Everable was just a dream. We didn’t have a name, but we had a vision—a society where everyone believes the world is better because of disabled people. I was behind the camcorder of these frames, figuring out how to live as a ghostwriter on $3 a day, while Jaymo (holding the mic) and Rachel (being interviewed) were helping to ignite one of Africa’s most transformational disability movements. We had big dreams of amplifying the voices of people with intellectual disabilities, but we didn’t have a microphone. Back then, 93% of Kenyans got their news from the radio, and smartphones were still rare. So audio was king—not video. A decent microphone cost half a year’s salary, but the cooking stick did the trick. It made people smile and feel at ease. They had never been interviewed by a wooden spatula. Special shout out to Stanford University @stanfordstorytellingproject and the University of Notre Dame @notredame for helping us upgrade from the cooking stick to a real microphone back in 2014! We’ll never forget your generosity and your faith in us before we had the tools to prove ourselves. And another big shout out to St. Martin Kenya and @larche_kenya for their transformative grassroots work over the last 25 years. You’re an inspiration.

Across the plains of Kajiado, dotted with acacia trees and patches of wild sage, the Maasai people maintain a deep connection to their traditions. But there exists a difficult history, where children born with disabilities are sometimes separated from their families and left in the forests. Locals have observed increased hyena populations in areas where these abandonments occur. Last month, we met Anthony, a young Maasai Ilmoran with an intellectual disability. Though initially described as non-verbal, our conversation revealed that he could speak clearly. As the sun set, it became clear that Anthony’s silence was not due to his disability, but rather to a culture that had not yet fully heard him.