May Contain: My Life - Behind the Scenes with Mandi Kearns

This week on the podcast, I’m joined by filmmaker and advocate Mandi Kearns of Just Like You Films to discuss the upcoming food allergy docudrama, May Contain: My Life.

This conversation explores not only the making of the film, but the emotional realities behind it: parenting through food allergies, navigating fear and resilience, sibling experiences, emergency situations, advocacy, and the ways these experiences continue to live in our nervous systems long after reactions are over.

One of the things I appreciated most about this film is that it does not portray individuals with food allergies as fragile or broken. Instead, it honestly captures the complexity of living with food allergies while still centering resilience, identity, connection, humor, and humanity.

This is an incredibly meaningful conversation for food allergy parents, adult patients, providers, advocates, and anyone wanting to better understand the lived experience of this community.

Learn more:

• Just Like You Films: https://justlikeyoufilms.org
• Film information and screenings: https://justlikeyoufilms.org
• JLY Films' Walk Beside You Promise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0UUxOzL84U
• AMC Showtimes: https://www.amctheatres.com/

Special thanks to Kyle Dine for permission to use his song The Doghouse for the podcast theme!
www.kyledine.com

Find Dr. Whitehouse:
-thefoodallergypsychologist.com
-Instagram: @thefoodallergypsychologist
-Facebook: Dr. Amanda Whitehouse, Food Allergy Anxiety Psychologist
-welcome@dramandawhitehouse.com

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Welcome back. Today's episode is one that I'm especially excited to share because we're talking about something our community has needed for a long time: honest representation of food allergy life. I'm joined by filmmaker and advocate Mandi Kearns of Just Like You Films to discuss the upcoming docudrama May Contain: My Life, a film that explores the realities of living with food allergies, not just medically, but emotionally too. As both a psychologist and a food allergy parent, there were moments in this film that felt incredibly familiar and deeply moving. What I appreciated most, though, is that this story is not centered around fear or victimhood. It's centered around resilience, humanity, and the everyday experiences that so many families quietly carry. I'm really grateful for this conversation and for this film, and I think that many of you will feel deeply seen by it. Welcome to the Don't Feed the Fear podcast, where we dive into the complex world of food allergy anxiety. I'm your host, Dr. Amanda Whitehouse, food allergy anxiety psychologist and food allergy mom. Whether you're dealing with allergies yourself or supporting someone who is, join us for an empathetic and informative journey toward food allergy calm and confidence..

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 1:10

Mandi, thank you so much for joining me here on the Don't Feed The Fear Podcast. I'm so excited to meet you.

Mandi Kearns 1:14

Thank you so much for having me on. Really excited to finally be on and chat it with you.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 1:18

Of course. It was exciting for me. It's one of the perks of podcasting to get a sneak peek of the film and to get to watch it and then to ask you all the things that are on my mind about it. I was wondering if you could start just by giving us a background on you? Your professional path, from what I read, has really changed and been influenced by this project.

Mandi Kearns 1:36

It has. So I come from an educator background. I was a teacher taught first and second grade. When I had my first child, my daughter who is now 20, I decided to become a stay at home mom. And then when my second child was born, which is Giles, he was, is my food allergy individual. And I got thrust into the advocacy world because I know we'll probably get into this further later, but I just became a food allergy advocate. Did several, lots of work around that, and then from that came into filmmaking.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 2:10

How did you get connected with, Just Like You Films?

Mandi Kearns 2:14

So through my advocacy role, I always took a lot of food allergy parents and educated the school every year about his case, specifically what he could have, what he couldn't have. And then I always took expired Epinephrine into the classrooms and have the teachers try it.'cause it gives a little bit a tiny bit of feedback. I think it's just takes that edge off of the nervousness. His fourth grade year. I went in to do that and got a, I don't need to do this, you like, you don't have to train me. I'm good. I got it. I got it. I got it. And

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 2:42

From the teacher.

Mandi Kearns 2:42

from the teacher. Yes. And I left that training with the teacher in August and I called my husband. I'm like, this is not gonna be good. I have just a terrible feeling about this year. And not even two weeks into school, he got served the wrong lunch from the lunchroom, and they called me from the table and said, Giles has ingested one of his allergens. What do you want us to do? I just said you, I want you to follow his action plan, which states if he's ingested anything without any signs or symptoms, at this point, you still need to give him epinephrine and call nine one. And they're like, right here at the table? And I was like, yes. Right here at the table. He always has his medicine on him. Just do it. So I immediately left the house, not even five minutes away, and got a call. I was about one block from school and got a secondary call from the school. And of course my heart stopped immediately thinking this isn't good. And it was a school nurse who called and said, are you sure? Are you sure you want us to give him epinephrine? And I'm like, I lost my cool. And screamed through the receiver and, screamed, give him his medicine now. And Giles at nine years old, overheard that, pulled his own AuviQ out and gave his own activity medicine at nine years old for the first time. He's had it several times, but the first time he had administered himself. All the advocacy, all the work we'd done, training worked. But for him, it worked for him. He knew how to do it. And so then the next day at Carpool Line, a parent came up to me and said, have you ever heard of just like You films? I was like, no, I actually haven't. And she's you need to because you are a parent who has done absolutely everything. You've advocated, you've went above and beyond. You've trained in. They still didn't do what they should have done. They still didn't get it. And you need to create a film. Like we need to have a film about food allergies because there are so many people out there who don't have the what's the right word? The audacity or the like, who don't have the drive or the confidence to do that, to go and train and take care of their kids in that way, even though they want to, they just don't have it. And I did not have that. I didn't feel like until you have to like, it's, it's this world that we live in with food allergy kids. You have to do what you have to do to protect'em. So then I met with Jen Green Street, who is our CEO and founder of just like You films. She's created. In the past 20 years, 15 films this this collection cakes up to 15 films. And I came on with her and we started making this film and then I became part of staff at just Like You films for Director of Impact and now I'm COO and filmmaker.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 5:20

Wonderful. Can you tell us a little bit about the other films, just to give us an idea of some of the other topics

Mandi Kearns 5:25

absolutely. So it started with Just Like You: Burns and then Just Like You: C aring For a Burn Survivor. Progressed into Just Like You: Down Syndrome, Just Like You: Diabetes, Just Like You: Anxiety and Depression, that's our only other feature length documentary. We have facial anomalies in cleft, lip and palate. And Just Like You: Autism.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 5:48

that's amazing that those resources are out there

Mandi Kearns 5:50

and we're super excited. We have our first ever feature length narrative film that we went in partnership with Voyage Media and Low Road Media, and it's called Rise and Shine, and it's about a girl who lives with cerebral palsy. It's based on a true story. Super sweet story.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 6:07

Oh wow. So now you're staying on with the company and continuing to work there. You said you're the COO now, so tell me about your role and the future of what's next?

Mandi Kearns 6:17

Yeah, so just like you films is a small grassroots nonprofit in production company. So we, we do a lot and we all wear a lot of different hats. We're working on getting in the classrooms. You can view them all in Just Like You TV, and we're trying to do what we call the"empathy engine," which takes a film into workplaces, healthcare systems, schools. We do a small little discussion ahead of time, a little activity maybe. We show the film, we do a discussion afterwards, and we have something called The Walk Beside You Promise that was wrote by Jen several years ago, and we always end it by everybody reciting the walk beside you promise, because it is so meaningful and powerful.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 6:58

Is that written somewhere where people can read it if they want to see the language of that? Or is it just a part of the experience

Mandi Kearns 7:04

No, it's on our webpage. We have a video that's called The Walk Beside You Promise, and that's on there for free.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 7:10

Okay. And obviously we're smiling and we're saying this is great. Like what a huge success. But all of these films must have come from struggle and pain and fear and really horrible stories like, like your sons. And so a lot of parent advocates out there like pushing for their kids,

Mandi Kearns 7:26

Yep. Every film has been brought to just like you by a parent. Really like me. There's always one driving force. The one really cool and unique part about Just Like You Films, is it's not trying to victimize. We're not trying to be like, poor me, I'm the victim or poor my child. He lives with food allergies. He has such a horrible life. No, that's not true. Like he's a hero. And all these kids, they are the heroes. They're the ones who need to be raised up and not to, like you're, don't feed the fear. We're not trying to make people fearful and these kids are truly the stars. They just live with this. It's just one part of who they are.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 8:04

Yeah, I always say they're the bravest people that I know.

Mandi Kearns 8:06

Very true.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 8:08

And I think that's a good segue because the film really shows that. I think the film does such a good job of demonstrating that. Let's talk around it a little bit and talk about what it was like to be then professionally involved, but also obviously so emotionally as the parent and the driving force behind the topic too.

Mandi Kearns 8:24

This was my first introduction into filmmaking and now of course we've moved on to do I've been on other sets and created, we've created some other films and progressed since we filmed this. But it was very unique because I was learning as I went as well, the film side of it. This is my heart, like this film is my heart and soul, and I protected it. At every roundabout corner we went to, I would protect the integrity of it and the stories we were telling to make sure there was the stories we should be telling. Sometimes, we did have to show the bullying'cause bullying's a real thing. It's real. That's real life. So we wanted to make sure we really showed what everyday life is for these kids. And what could truly happen. And so it, it was emotional to say the least. We were very intentional about the emotional journey, like the journey that we wanted the viewer to go on as well. Jen is amazing at showing the movie Arc and I feel like this film shows it really well.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 9:16

It does. And I definitely, I was on that emotional rollercoaster ride. I have to admit. I definitely cried. My son is now living in maintenance for OIT and Slit. So he's done treatments for his allergies. So it's not as anxiety provoking

Mandi Kearns 9:28

Right.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 9:28

To be, and yet when I was watching this, like a lot of that is still under there, even for me as someone in mental health that's been working on it. Can you say more about what that intention was to walk people through emotionally and what you're telling people about preparing for watching something so emotional?

Mandi Kearns 9:45

It wasn't about the fear. It's about being resilient, the strength that these kids feel and what it means for everyday life. I've actually underwent another journey through this since we filmed my, she's a sophomore now. My freshman in college developed a peanut allergy and, she's living across the country. So it's, there's, it, I feel like life, as we all know, it ebbs and flows and that was just another curve that we had to take. But it's been interesting because she was actually in the film as like a background not as a star, like you know how it is siblings and but she didn't have the allergies at the time and it's been interesting to navigate that as well now because it was always a supporter, but also, this is probably from the anxiety where part of it all that she lived, a lot of the anxiety, having her brother go by ambulance all the time, and now we've went back into that realm. So it's the emotional part of it is hard. When I watch it, when we have our premiere, I will definitely probably be crying again because it's hard for me to watch. It still is hard for me to watch to go back and watch it because it is such an emotional journey, but I'm so proud of it.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 10:53

Oh my gosh. So I'd have to say, I have worked with what seems like statistically a surprising amount of kids who developed an allergy when they went away to college for the first time. Have you heard other people say that?

Mandi Kearns 11:07

Well. I immediately text an allergist that I know. I was like, what is going on is I have never heard of especially a peanut allergy, like I feel like. You hear of other allergens, shellfish is the big one in adult life. She's a college volleyball player and they really put a lot of peanut butter in her diet when she got to college. And I think her immune system, I'm guessing because we didn't have a lot of it here in the house. We didn't, we had an allergy safe house as far as, we didn't have nuts in the house. But when we'd go away to like volleyball tournaments, we'd always make sure to eat it. So she had it before. So it's really. Her case is very common, very interesting

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 11:40

I'm sorry to hear that. And yeah, what a rollercoaster for her from, like you said, it is tr it can be very traumatizing for the siblings watching and being on the outskirts and then to be thrust into it herself is really unique

Mandi Kearns 11:51

isn't it? Yeah.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 11:52

path.

Mandi Kearns 11:53

Yeah.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 11:53

Wow. Wow. So is she doing well? Was she managing well now away at school and

Mandi Kearns 11:59

She's still settling in. There's, she's a sophomore now, so she's had it now for this, her second school year, and we've had a few bumps in the road this year, but it's, it always seems to be that when I'm on an airplane or out of the country that she calls, it's mom I'm having a reaction.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 12:14

Oh, no.

Mandi Kearns 12:15

Take your medicine and call the ambulance and, the whole protocols. But she's managing it as well as she can.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 12:21

My heart aches for both of you to be navigating that and being so far away from her and getting those calls. Oh

Mandi Kearns 12:26

It's, yeah

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 12:27

Ugh.

Mandi Kearns 12:27

it's definitely a struggle.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 12:29

Yeah. Yeah. My son had one, like the first time I dared to travel after he had been doing well and was away, and he had a reaction in the middle of the night while I was gone. And that is, that was... to not be able to

Mandi Kearns 12:40

Yeah,

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 12:40

with them.

Mandi Kearns 12:40

you just feel so hopeless. I'm like, I can't do anything. I'm in Kansas. I'm so far away from you. But she has a great support system around her, which is, like this last time she had a reaction and her volleyball coach called me and she's I am following the ambulance. Right now, like I can see her, I'm following her there. And then she sent me a picture of her like thumbs up and, we're very fortunate that she has that now.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 13:02

Wow. I wish her the best in settling in and learning to adjust. While we're talking about that, if it's okay, why don't you give us an update on how your son is doing?

Mandi Kearns 13:10

He's managing, so he has peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, buckwheat, and sesame. He just avoids and does, he does his thing. He's doing great. He's every other food allergy kiddo. Pretty much, I would guess. You would never know by looking at him. He's, now from the film, he's now six five and 205 pounds. He's a big boy.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 13:29

Oh my gosh.

Mandi Kearns 13:30

He's a huge football player. You would just never guess by looking at him that he has this, which is part of the uniqueness of I think food allergies is you, they're invisible. Food allergies are invisible, but the consequences are not, which we all probably found out in some way or another.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 13:45

Yeah. Which, and then so back to the film. I think it does such a good job of displaying that and pulling you in. I watched it, as a parent who has been through it, but I think for people who haven't walked it too, it will give them a little bit of a taste of what it feels like.

Mandi Kearns 14:00

We showed the trailer at a restaurant association and I had somebody fly up to me afterwards and was like, Mandi, I've known you for like ever, and I didn't know you were making a film about my life. And he goes, and he's 50 in his fifties. He's I live with severe food allergies. You know that. And this is he goes, I was sitting over there crying, just watching the trailer. And I'm like okay, so there are a lot of people that this is really gonna impact beyond I think we even have a grapple on. But our, we went into it with, we know the food allergy community knows all this, or the majority of them know this. They live it. It's their everyday life. The intention behind it is more for the people who don't live this every day. For the people who come up to us and say, Mandi, are Giles, is allergies really that bad? Or, come on I want my cookie. Like, why can't my kid have their cupcake or cookie? This is for those people to help them create a little bit more empathy,'cause once they can feel something, that's when change is gonna happen. So we're hoping that the film evokes empathy, invokes all these feelings that they'll be able to better understand what life is really like for our community.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 15:07

Yeah. It sounds like the feedback you're getting from people who already know it is that validation. I see myself reflected in this, and that makes our experiences valid because I think so much of the time we do get, like you just described, questioned, Are you sure? It probably can't be that bad. All of those kind of questions and challenges that we receive, and this lays it out there emotionally, but also factually, and with it backed up by information of what the risk really is.

Mandi Kearns 15:34

It was really important for us to have Ruchi Gupta on screen and be able to do the factual behind the scenes. She is also a mother of a food allergy kiddo. So Ria, her daughter is in the film, which is super sweet. So you see the mother side of her too. But it's also great to have the scientific behind the scenes so you can actually learn what happens when a food allergy reaction is happening.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 15:56

Yeah. Yeah. And it's, exciting for those of us in the food allergy community. She's our rock star,

Mandi Kearns 16:00

Yeah.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 16:01

So we love seeing and hearing from her because she does know it from both angles, and she's just amazing in terms of the progress that she's made for us. Do you wanna talk about some of the other folks who are in it, who are probably drawing a lot of attention too?

Mandi Kearns 16:12

Yes. So we have our spokesperson is Jerome Bettis. Jerome"The Bus" Bettis from the Pittsburgh Steelers. He used to play for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He is our, I would say, our soundboard through the whole thing, and I think he's amazing. Like we could not have gotten luckier to have him in the project. His voice, just from the peer stigma point of view to show that, these kids are strong and food allergy kid people can be strong. They're tough and he proves that so well, and he really I feel like at least portrays that throughout the whole film.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 16:43

Yeah.'cause he's the opposite of that stereotype that everyone jumps to of the kid with the peanut allergy.

Mandi Kearns 16:48

Yep.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 16:48

And that was so exciting for me. I'll take some flack for this because I live in Buffalo, but I grew up in Pennsylvania. I'm a Steeler's girl,

Mandi Kearns 16:54

it, was really neat when we went down to film with him. My son went down for part of the scene and I dunno if I should give that away, but, he goes down for part of the scene and meets him and afterwards Giles was talking to him'cause Giles is an up and coming football player. And he was just asking him questions about, how did you navigate the locker room and team dinners? And I tell you, Jerome was so pa like he just sat with him and talked to him and talked about how they did it and, what hap what worked for him. And Ava's just as a mom, like to have such a famous person, be able to take time and talk to him and really educate him on what worked for him and his football career and how to move forward was really special.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 17:32

That's so cool and not surprising. Everything I've ever heard about him is as a person, not just a player. How amazing he is.

Mandi Kearns 17:37

Yeah,

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 17:37

you, Jerome

Mandi Kearns 17:39

agreed.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 17:40

for being part of this. That's amazing.

Mandi Kearns 17:41

Yes. And then we also have two previous Disney Stars, August Hurro and Ava Colker, who are in our narrative thread of the film. So I guess I should probably preface with, our documentary is not a traditional documentary, we have, it's called a docudrama. So it's a documentary that weaves in a narrative thread throughout the whole thing. So we do have the narrative available on its own. It's 20 minutes. But we weaved it through the documentary to show, like we talked about earlier, how food allergies are invisible. And we could have the talking head. But the way we're really gonna make the impact, create the empathy is to have the narrative thread, which is gonna show people what's going on. So August came on and August was originally signed on just to be part of the documentary. And then as we started to progress and we were casting, Jen came up with the idea to what if we shot a narrative piece? And we wove it throughout since he is a actor already. He got Ava and then we did a casting call and got Tanner who is just just cast as Shaggy in the new Netflix show and Zeina. So they are our main four actors in the narrative portion of the film. So it was really exciting to get them on there. And since August lives with real life food allergies and has had a reaction on set. He brought the aspect to that role that we really needed.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 19:03

That was so cool and so powerful to find out that's the case for him. Obviously good actors can act, but to know that it's someone who's invested in the topic and the cause makes it special.

Mandi Kearns 19:12

There were times on set where, we would, we were making it as authentic as we could. Without trying. That's, that is the part that could potentially like, be traumatic to people. I think seeing a real life anaphylaxis, not real life movie life, still, we,

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 19:28

Accurately depicted, though.

Mandi Kearns 19:28

We were really cautious about making it. As real life as we could. As far as even, I know on set we had a couple questions. Like we were calling Rucci from set to be like, what do you think? I think we should do this. What do you think? Just stuff to make sure that we were really, truly portraying it. At one point it was originally in the script to use Benadryl and I was like, we can't use Benadryl. We're not using Benadryl. If he thinks he's exactly, if he thinks he's having a reaction, no, we cannot have him using Benadryl like that. That's one of the biggest no, like we aren't doing that. So there's certain things as we went through it, like we modified onset and we progressed with what we knew was the right way to go. And I hope, I really think we did, but I really hope everybody else feels that we did a good job in portraying it.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 20:10

It can look so different from person to person,

Mandi Kearns 20:12

was interest.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 20:13

So there's no one way but to do it accurately and to show. Them making the correct, and I won't give away too

Mandi Kearns 20:20

Yeah.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 20:20

either, but it does also display some of his, some of the hesitation and some of what we maybe

Mandi Kearns 20:25

Yep.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 20:26

shouldn't do and help us to understand why, especially kids that age, that's powerful.

Mandi Kearns 20:30

And through the years I always oh, surely when we get to teenage years, it's not really gonna change. Oh, yes, it will. Sorry. So all of you that have younger kids now. It will change. Like I, there are times, Giles was so loyal to being, like taking his EPIs everywhere and not taking risk, and he still doesn't necessarily take risk. But his EPIs are honestly something where I'm like, do you have them? Where are they? Show me like, because I think even though he uses the barbecue, which is smaller and you can hide it a little bit more, he's still a teenage boy who. But he is he will not take risks with food. He is very picky in his food, and I think that is, I'm guessing part of being food allergy as well. Like they get used to what they can eat and what they can't eat. But the teenage years have definitely changed a bit.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 21:18

Yes. And I love that's the thread that you picked for the narrative because I do think A ll the stages are hard, but I think for us as parents and for kids going through so much at that age, I do think emotionally that's where a lot of this kicks in. And you depicted that so well.

Mandi Kearns 21:33

And we really wanted to hit the pain points or what we felt were the pain points, I would say for food allergy families. The main one that kept coming through when talking to the real life families are birthday parties. Birthday parties are a struggle for kids. And as they become teenagers and as they get older, even yet, it's a struggle. So that's why we decided to show a birthday party scene. And then, we all know like restaurants, airplanes, I could go on and on about the schools, the pain points as well. But that was the one we picked that we thought would be the best

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 22:02

The other pain point that I love that you threw in there was someone trying to help. Someone thinking that they're protecting the person, and I won't say how,

Mandi Kearns 22:11

Yes.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 22:12

someone thinking that they're doing a good deed and helping the person with the allergy that didn't fully understand the situation with good intention, not trying to bully him or pick on him.

Mandi Kearns 22:22

We thought it was really important to show that because there are a lot of well-intended people. I think in everybody's journey, there's somebody there who has the best of intentions. Like they're not trying to put you at risk, they're not trying to hurt you. They're trying to really be inclusive, but not understanding that a baked good made in somebody else's kitchen would ever be safe. Like for, I would never allow my child to have a baked good from someone else's kitchen just because of potential cross-contamination. And I think that cross-contamination piece is one that a lot of people don't think about, whether it be in restaurants or in homes or anywhere, schools. That is a definite pain point and something that we wanted to make sure to touch on that is a real risk.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 23:02

So well done. Going into it, I'm like, oh, how are they gonna do this? I'd heard about the structure and you weaved in so many important points while you're doing the narrative, while you're breaking away for, the documentary pieces with the talking heads explaining like, there's just so much to it, and it does feel like watching a movie.

Mandi Kearns 23:19

Thank you. I think that everyday kids who did their story, who told their stories, did a really good job of showing how their reactions could be different because every kid in the documentary did share, what their reactions looked like, and they are all different, which I think was a good portion. Like we, yes, we had to show one style of a reaction and what that reaction looked like, but that is one style or what one of them could look like.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 23:43

I'm curious about, we touched on that, there's the VR piece, but we didn't circle

Mandi Kearns 23:48

Yeah,

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 23:48

you tell us about that?

Mandi Kearns 23:49

absolutely. Jen loves VR. So when VR was at its biggest hype, I would say during COVID, it was just. It was amazing. She used it all the time. How she communicated with her family, so when we were going out to LA to shoot the narrative piece, she said, what if, Mandi, what do you think if we shoot it in vr, virtual reality 360. I was like can we afford it? We are a nonprofit. We found Barry Pousman, who is a amazing dp. He was our director of photography for the virtual reality. He worked with us. He works, I know he is done a ton of work with Columbia. He's done presentations with the United Nations, with virtual reality. We hit the jackpot with him. So we would film. The narrative piece, like a traditional movie style with all your lights and your cameras and set, set up. And then we would clear the site and we'd set a 3, 360 camera in the middle of the scene and clear everything out, like people and everything. I'd be hidden. And we put a little face on our camera, which is really cute. Like our pictures are funny. But then we would shoot it all again and the actors would act to the camera. So in real. And when you're shooting, otherwise you never act a camera. Like when you're doing a narrative piece, you never look at the camera. This one, we told them all to look at the camera because the VR piece is called May Contain two sides. And the really neat part is it's like there's a line down the middle, like our screen is right now. And you can look to the right and you can see Zach's, POV. Who was played by August Hurro. You can do Zach's, POV of what it's like for him in the eyes of somebody who lives with food allergies, or you can look the other direction and look in Lydia's point of view, which is Xia and see her. She's trying to advocate on behalf of him, and she, kind has the crush on him and what it's like to be the person on the outside of the food allergy world looking in. So it's really neat. It's it was indie. A film festival in Paris. Got a lot of reviews there. So we're trying to figure out what, how to, what to do with it right now. We do have this weekend the YMCA is having us out. We're doing a VR bar, is what we call'em. So we go out places and we hook up the virtual reality headset. We have five headsets and we put'em in it and they watch it. And it's been amazing. It's, it truly puts people into the shoes. Where you can sit on a sit and watch on a screen, but this literally, you put the headset on and you are thrown into the world.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 26:21

That's really cool. And is the VR part the narrative only then?

Mandi Kearns 26:25

Yes. The VR part is only narrative and there are small differences. From the actual feature length and the other flat narrative. There are small little tweaks we made. But otherwise it's the same film.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 26:37

Wow. So you mentioned a little bit of recognition that you've been getting. I know you've got a big premiere coming up, but tell me more about that end of things.

Mandi Kearns 26:45

Yes. So we are so excited. We've done our festival run and we are, I believe, unless something comes up, we are done with our festival run. We are premiering our red carpet world premiere. So we have not premiered this anywhere yet, is here in Kansas City, May 21st at Union Station for any of you sports fans. It was where the draft was held. Union Station is the icon of Kansas City, so we're really thrilled to be having it there. And then May 22nd to May 29th, a MC theaters has picked this up. So our film will be around AMC theaters, 150 to 200 theaters nationwide. For that week for sure. We had our anxiety and depression film picked up in the same capacity, and a lot of theaters ended up keeping it for the month we'll, we have to say it'll be there for a week, but we're really optimistic that it'll stay there for longer so everybody can get out and watch it. After that run, we will pull it in-house for a little bit on our main page, Just Like You TV and keep it on there for rentals for a period of time. But we have signed an agreement with Giant Pictures, and that'll put it on Amazon Prime apple tv all the major tvOS. So they'll put'em out. It'll be out on all those major platforms for anybody to get access to.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 28:04

Wow. So you probably don't know the timeline yet then of when that will be?

Mandi Kearns 28:07

July is when we're thinking that will, it'll be live on all those platforms. We have a agreement with Collective Eye, and Collective Eye is an educational distributor, so they're gonna put it up for colleges to get access to. It'll be in library systems and on canopy. But we have on this deal, we reserved all the rights, so we're keeping it in house as far as we will always own it. We'll always own all the rights. So we can take it. If you called me tomorrow and said, Hey, Mandi, come to our support group. Come to our school. Come to our workplace, we will come because we will not be under an agreement. We'll, we have access to the film. We'll be able to come to any education screenings, trainings anywhere we want, whenever we want.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 28:45

Oh my gosh. So tons of ways for people to see

Mandi Kearns 28:47

Yes.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 28:48

that they, if they're in the area or they wanna travel, they can come to the big event in May. They can keep an eye on their local movie theaters. If they're not lucky enough to see it at AMC, they can rent it, they can wait for it to stream. They can reach out to you directly. It

Mandi Kearns 29:02

Yeah,

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 29:02

they wanna create an event, like for an organization or

Mandi Kearns 29:05

absolutely. And it's gonna get Oscar qualified. I forgot to mention that part. So we're getting it Oscar qualified in May, so it'll get Oscar qualified in New York City.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 29:13

Tell me about that process. I know nothing about it.

Mandi Kearns 29:15

Yeah, so to get a film Oscar qualified, it has to play in a theater in a certain region. There are like five, I think it's five major regions it can play in New York is one of'em. Chicago, Atlanta, LA. Like it has to be in one of their theaters, but it has to play for a week straight and it has to play for a minimum of three times a day. And one of those times has to be after 7:00 PM. And then the other way to get Oscar qualified is if you win a major film festival.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 29:40

Okay. And then what category would it be in once it's Oscar qualified?

Mandi Kearns 29:44

documentary.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 29:45

any,

Mandi Kearns 29:46

Yeah, I know it's,

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 29:47

a drama.

Mandi Kearns 29:48

I know it's interesting, like we've always wondered like what categories and when we were going through the film festival route, we always put it in documentary, but we were like what should it have been in? We don't know. Like people can tell us,

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 29:58

yeah. It's pretty unique the way that you did that. You're calling it a docudrama, but I've never heard that phrase before.

Mandi Kearns 30:02

The only other one we've ever really was the social dilemma on Netflix. So they followed a docudrama and that's where we got the word docudrama, I guess you could say. So they had a similar platform to what we did.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 30:14

Okay. Yeah, I forgot about that one. But yes, that will help people understand it a little bit better if they're not sure what we're talking

Mandi Kearns 30:19

Yes.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 30:20

when we keep calling it that. Please tell them where they can find everything, how they can follow you so they don't miss it.

Mandi Kearns 30:25

Yeah. So we do have a webpage just for this. It's called may contain films.org. So you can hop on there. You can hop on just like you films.org and that can link out to it as well. So if you can't remember the May contains films. Just go to May just like you films, dot. And it will link out to our page and then follow us on social media. We have a great Instagram. We do Facebook. We do a tiny bit of Twitter, we do LinkedIn. So yeah, give us a follow and follow along on our journey.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 30:55

Wonderful. And you're a nonprofit, people can support you by renting or watching the film, but what are other ways for people to support you if they would like to?

Mandi Kearns 31:02

Yes, we are still looking for red carpet sponsors, to be honest. We're doing our red carpet here, but we're also wanna do a red carpet out in New York City for the Elijah Alavi Foundation. Dina told her story for the very first time, and I don't think we even touched on this yet she told her story for the very, very first time ever in this documentary and it was heartbreaking. She's amazing and a powerhouse, and Thomas and Dina have been nothing short of amazing partners for us, and we are working together on launching this out together. They will be at the Red carpet Premier, both of them, but we also wanna do a red carpet out in New York for them. So where Elijah's Law originally was founded we would like to do one out there. So that's that. In the same week, we're gonna try and do some type of red carpet or Q&A after one of the showings out there.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 31:51

That's amazing and I'm, I am glad that you mentioned that because I know many of us in the community, we just we support them and we appreciate them so much and their story is so powerful.

Mandi Kearns 32:01

Yes. And I think the key part there is we just didn't wanna focus on necessarily the details of what happened because it was horrific and we all know that. But we wanted to raise more awareness about the education and training and what Elijah's Law is doing, what Dean and Thomas, how they've become so strong and are still advocating like crazy and creating all kinds of waves, which is amazing. It's heartbreaking no matter how you think about it. But I think her story does make the film so impactful.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 32:35

And their work and the advocacy and all of the people, I just think all the time of how many kids they've saved

Mandi Kearns 32:40

Yes.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 32:40

the work that they've done and all of the the legal advocacy side of it, I think is another angle that you weaved in with our story and with their story. So thank you both to them because I think it's, that gives us hope that we could change something.

Mandi Kearns 32:53

I know I have went down to Missouri to testify twice on behalf of Elijah's Law, and every time I say, I could have been in the same situation as them if my son had been younger, if he wasn't able to pull out that device to save his own life. So those younger childcare settings, it's so important for them to be trained properly, to know how to use epinephrine,devices. I think it's definitely saving lives, definitely.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 33:22

It is. Thank you to them. Thank you to everybody who is involved, all the actors, all the contributors to you, everyone on the team there. It's so wonderful in so many ways to have this out there for us and to speak on behalf of our community and represent us in a way that's accurate and emotional and validating. Thank you.

Mandi Kearns 33:39

Absolutely. We are, like I said, we are always looking for sponsors, so if anybody out there wants to help sponsor us and get this out there even more, and help us to continue to create films about individual unique circumstances and what people live with and bringing light to them, we'd really appreciate it and go watch the film.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 33:57

Absolutely. Go and watch it. Please don't miss it. And what's a final thought you want to leave everybody with?

Mandi Kearns 34:02

Our goal is to make sure the film reaches as many people as possible because awareness is what truly makes the difference and is going to change the world

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 34:11

Yeah, so don't just watch, but share. Share with the people who don't understand that need to know.

Mandi Kearns 34:15

A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Yeah.

Amanda Whitehouse, PhD 34:18

I am so appreciative of your work and so happy to meet you. Thanks for being here.

Mandi Kearns 34:21

Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Speaker 2 34:23

Thank you again to Mandi Kearns and everyone who worked on this film for creating something honest, thoughtful, and important for our community. Before we wrap up, here are three ways you can support this project and continue the conversation. First, This episode is airing on May 19th, and the premiere in Kansas City is on May 21st. So if you happen to be in the area and still have time to try to attend, I'm sure that would be an amazing experience for you. But for those who aren't able to do that, look up the AMC theater near you and see if May Contain: My Life is showing in your area. Showing up for projects like this helps demonstrate how important these stories are. Second, visit maycontainfilms.org for other films and educational resources that this group has created. There are incredible projects helping children and families from all different experiences feel represented, understood, and less alone. And third, share this episode with someone who may benefit from it, whether it's another parent, patient, provider, educator, family member, or especially someone outside of our community who is open to better understanding what food allergy life can really feel like. These conversations matter, representation matters, and our community deserves stories that reflect the challenges and the resilience that exist within it. Thank you for listening, and I will talk to you again next week. The content of this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only, and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any questions about your own medical experience or mental health needs, please consult a professional. I'm Dr. Amanda Whitehouse. Thanks for joining me. And until we chat again, remember don't feed the fear.