Award-winning documentary featuring charity BlinkNow premieres at Mountainfilm festival
June 25 2024 - 12:06PM
Between the Mountain and the Sky, a documentary featuring nonprofit
BlinkNow Foundation and its Co-Founder and CEO Maggie Doyne,
premiered in May at Mountainfilm festival, in Telluride, Colorado,
earning critical acclaim and clinching both the Audience Choice
Award and Student Choice Award. The premiere was attended by
BlinkNow Co-Founders Doyne and Tope Malla, Director Jeremy Power
Regimbal, and young adults who have graduated from BlinkNow’s
Kopila Valley School in Nepal.Early reviews have praised Doyne,
Regimbal, Malla, and their work while also hailing the uniqueness
of this humanitarian story. Telluride Inside calls the film "an
intimate documentary spanning nearly two decades, traversing the
landscapes of Nepal, the Netherlands, America, and Canada."Stephen
Saito on MoveableFest.com highlights the intimacy of watching
Doyne’s struggle with grief and her tension between two cultures,
calling it "unusually refreshing when it doesn’t linger on
the selfless work that Doyne has done, but provocatively asks at
what point she needs to protect herself from giving too much to be
useful.”BlinkNow has long been known for its focus on quality
relationships with those people it serves in Nepal, as well as with
supporters, volunteers, and donors across the globe. This was
evidenced by a large number of BlinkNow “extended family” who
traveled to Telluride to watch the film premiere and celebrate its
release with the founders.Director Jeremy Power Regimbal, who is
also featured in the film and married to Doyne, was overwhelmed
with the outpouring of excitement and attendees from the BlinkNow
supporter base and Mountainfilm audiences, who traveled from across
the U.S. and globally to attend the premiere. “I am just so
grateful… without humans that are taking risks and living the way
that Maggie and Tope live, there’s no film. I was very lucky to be
in the right place at the right time and feel so blessed to be part
of this family.”Doyne expressed her gratitude as well as her hopes
for the future at a premiere party hosted by BlinkNow. “We have the
best people in the world who have walked us through this story of
love and are standing here today. I hope the world will see that
loss is not the end, that the hard parts of life are not the end. I
want people to be reminded that love is the greatest healing force
we have. And if we take care of children, children take care of the
community, the country, and the world.”###More
information:
Between the Mountain and the Sky
follows Maggie Doyne’s journey from a childhood in New Jersey to a
high school gap year and world travels, which led her to volunteer
in India alongside eventual Nepalese Co-Founder Tope Malla, and to
visit Nepal. Doyne’s life was changed by meeting the children of
Surkhet, Nepal, and she began to pursue a compassionate vision to
ensure that every child is safe, educated, and loved. As they
cultivated relationships and listened to the needs of the people in
this region, Doyne and Malla collaborated with the community to
establish a children’s home for those without families, a school
for children who cannot afford education, a women’s empowerment
center, and a host of other programs that together create a model
for comprehensive and sustainable community development.
Maggie Doyne was named the CNN Hero of the Year in
2015, has been featured in Forbes and the New York Times, and,
together with a team of caregivers and teachers, has helped to
raise more than 80 children and educate more than 600 students in
Nepal. She is the author of a memoir also named Between the
Mountain and the Sky: A Mother’s Story of Love, Loss, Healing, and
Hope.The film is directed by
Jeremy Power
Regimbal. Regimbal’s feature-film directorial debut, In
Their Skin, premiered at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival. He has
also worked with global brands like MasterCard, Nike, Chevrolet and
CitiBank. Regimbal co-founded The Lab Magazine, a print and digital
publication distributed in over 25 countries. He now lives between
Nepal and the USA, focusing on telling stories that matter via MPWR
CONTENT.Between the Mountain and the Sky is produced by
Duplass Brothers Productions (DBP), award-winning
filmmakers Mark Duplass, Jay Duplass and Mel Eslyn. DBP creates
original projects for film, television and digital media. In
January DBP premiered the pilot to their series “Penelope,” created
by Mark and Eslyn, at 2024's Sundance Film Festival. Their
most recent release, the docu-series “American Conspiracy: The
Octopus Murders,” debuted at #4 in the U.S. on Netflix.
Upcoming releases include Morrisa Maltz's Jazzy, which they
produced with Lily Gladstone, Nnamdi Asomugha's The Knife, and the
third season of HBO's “Somebody Somewhere.”
The BlinkNow
Foundation provides an education and a loving, caring home
for at-risk children. The foundation also provides community
outreach to reduce poverty, empower women, improve health, and
encourage sustainability and social justice -- it fulfills its
mission by providing financial support and management oversight to
the Kopila Valley Children's Home and award-winning Kopila Valley
School in Surkhet, Nepal. In addition to the home and school,
Kopila Valley runs a Health & Wellness program, Women's Center,
home for at-risk girls, Futures Program for career readiness, and
integrated Sustainability Program across all initiatives.
- Celebrating an Award-Winning Film Festival Weekend
Katy Munden Hays
BlinkNow Foundation
press@blinknow.org