Just hours before the Eaton Fire tore through Altadena earlier this month, filmmaker Meera Menon and her husband, Paul Gleason, were in Eaton Canyon. Eaton Canyon) playing with their 3-year-old.

“We have all the pictures on our camera roll of her playing with leaves in the wind,” Menon said.

Later, when they saw the flames, they grabbed the hard drive and left behind their dream home, a mid-century ranch house.

It was destroyed in the fire.

Menon and Gleeson are just weeks away from the premiere of their indie film, a low-budget zombie thriller called Not deadat the Sundance Film Festival.

In the movie, as the Bite roams the post-apocalyptic land, the main character, played by Kieran Dell, tries to connect with anyone still out there who might be listening to her podcast.

“We actually made the film at home,” Menon said.

The house appears in flashbacks in the film "as a memory of a happy time these people had before the apocalypse began, before the apocalypse. And all of a sudden, it's like holding up a mirror to what we're just starting to deal with." ”

community effort

Menon participated in the production of " Fear the Walking Dead, Westworld and Ms. Marvel, directed the film and co-wrote it with Gleeson, who shot the film. They funded it themselves and filmed it with their dogs, friends and family. Their daughter Lakshmi even appears in the form of a baby.

Menon's longtime friend Erica Fishman produced the film, she Husband Geoff Boothby edited it. They also lost their Altadena home where they lived their 3 year old daughter.

Now, Fishman and Menon are mourning their home and mountainside community, which they called a magical place where wild peacocks roamed the streets.

“This community of Altadena is where we want to spend the rest of our lives,” Menon said. “It can’t be overstated how special and unique and a true feeling of home this place has given us.”

Prescient information about loss

Menon saw the irony and symbolism in their post-apocalyptic film, which she began filming during the COVID-19 pandemic. "This film was born out of this feeling of the world being completely destabilized by COVID-19 in 2020, and how the world stopped," she said. "Production stopped. It was really bad for the entire economy for working people. It was devastating. From that point on, it just felt like one thing after another.”

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Hollywood writers and actors are on strike, and TV and film production is once again on hold. Menon and Fishman said they have persevered despite other changes upending the industry. The fire was the latest and most personal disaster they experienced while filming the film.

"We were just spinning, trying to understand how our film could be prophetic of what we were going through," Menon said.

"This movie is about - when the world falls apart, which is better: alone or with people? Do you need community or just yourself?" Fishman said.

At Sundance, they won't be the filmmakers who lose everything in the fire. So does Isaiah Saxon, the film's writer and director Tai Chi Legendwhich also premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and will be released in February; Amy Scholder, Sundance Documentary Filmmaker strengthen scrutiny, also lost her home Michelle Satter, founding director of the Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program.

Still, Menon and Fishman said they look forward to introducing their film to festival audiences.

“It felt like we had to go,” Menon said.

“We made this film with our closest friends in our community,” Fishman added. "We made this plan to celebrate this thing that we built together. It feels important and gratifying that we're still able to do this."

Not dead It's set to premiere Tuesday night, almost three weeks after the filmmakers left the house.