Winner of 13 Film Festival Awards, this short film is the fiction debut of Oscar-winning documentary director Cynthia Wade.
What happens when the health guru of your town — the one guy who got everyone to love sprouts — is killed in a sudden accident? For his grieving widow Beth, navigating life without Sproutman isn't easy, especially because her fitness freak neighbors can’t stop imitating him.
Inspired by true events and 4x-festival winner, Sproutland follows Beth as she navigates the constant reminders of her deceased husband — in the local juice bar, in the yoga studio, and at home with her son. As Beth forges a path she neither expected nor wanted, she learns that life can hold despair and joy at the same time.
Director’s Statement
This is a scripted film based on true events.
For nine years, I lived full-time in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in the heart of the Berkshires, a muddy, earnest community known for family farms, yogis, hikers and meditators, fiddlers, and felters.
When local health food guru “Sproutman” Steve Meyerowitz was killed in a car accident in 2015, a hole was ripped into the community. More than a thousand people showed up at Sproutman’s funeral. His wife Beth navigated an unfamiliar world where many around her clung to a reality that no longer existed.
The idea of a vibrant town clinging to a dead reality was intriguing to me, so this became the focal point of the story.
I am most interested in the intersection of fact and fiction. Over the years, I have increasingly directed my documentaries to look more like scripted films, where the shooting is deliberate, proactive (as opposed to reactive). This film blends traditional documentary elements (handheld camerawork, real-world texture) and magical hyperbole. The blurring of fact and fiction excites me.
In “Sproutland”, Beth plays herself. The rest of the cast is comprised of actors, both professional and novice. We used Zeiss high-speed prime lenses to give the film a polished but naturalistic look. My longtime documentary and commercial film collaborator Boaz Freund shot this on his Alexa. Oscar-nominated editor Fiona Otway, based nearby in the Hudson Valley, is the editor.
How do we sprout after trauma? As a documentary director who has spent much of her career filming non-actors, this is a natural world in which to explore fiction film work.
The continued success and reinvention of Sproutman’s business and the book Beth wrote, A Grief Sublime, are both testament to the possibility of rebirth and reinvention after death and trauma. This film, coming out of a reimagining of loss, allows for another form of rebirth.