Incarnations

INCARNATIONS was recently selected for a 2022-2023 Humanitas New Voices Fellowship, as a work that explores the human condition in a nuanced, meaningful way. INCARNATIONS also won FIRST PLACE in the Best Screenplay Competition at the Oscar-accredited 2021 Rhode Island International Film Festival and is a "BLACK LIST ENDORSED" script with Black List readers remarking: "Thought-provoking, mind-blowing, and heartfelt, INCARNATIONS blends science-fiction, spirituality, and pathos to create something wholly new and memorable... INCARNATIONS hooks our attention immediately with its mind-blowing high concept. The execution that follows is thoughtful and human... incredibly powerful and stirring, a unique catharsis only this script and this concept can deliver." "Clever, original, intellectually stimulating, and gripping, a high concept idea that translates into a smart character- and idea-driven story... The plot twists are consistently surprising... The kind of low-budget, intellectual thriller that plays at Sundance... The ideas are king here." "INCARNATIONS is a superbly written, richly compelling medical drama... The dissemination of information is perfectly timed and paced, creating an engrossing mystery, delivered with a curt eloquence... The final sequence in France is absolutely stunning; emotionally gutting; while deeply life-affirming... Simultaneously smart, different, expertly rendered and ultimately profound... This is the type of work that should have an easy time finding champions, and would fit perfectly within the catalogues of any one of the major streamers." In the years following his four-year-old son Braden’s death, renowned biology professor Dr. Thomas Hunter has obsessed over an epigenetic marker called “K17” and its possible connection with the afterlife. In doing so, he’s alienated his colleagues, his students, and most of all his wife Sarah. After getting fired by the university, Thomas stumbles upon a startling theory involving reincarnation—that upon death, every person’s unique K17 mark disappears, only to reappear in a newborn baby that is the reincarnation. Thomas dubs the K17 mark the “fingerprint of the soul.” To test his theory, Thomas journeys to Tibet to compare the K17 mark of the newly selected Dalai Lama with the K17 mark of the recently deceased Dalai Lama. While observing the breathtaking landscapes and the devout Buddhists and their rituals, Thomas begins to have a spiritual awakening. Thomas meets a Tibetan woman, Samaya, who struggles to provide home care for her vegetative son. He bonds with her over their common grief, but they don’t see eye-to-eye—Samaya leans into her Buddhist spirituality, while Thomas still leans into science. Nevertheless, Samaya helps Thomas in his quest. After some scientific and even political setbacks, Thomas is thrilled to find that the Dalai Lamas’ marks are a perfect match. This definitive proof of reincarnation is a relief for Samaya—she finally allows herself to remove her son’s feeding tube. As her son passes away, she recites prayers from the sacred 8th-century text THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD. Upon reading the book, Thomas realizes that after death, a person’s reincarnation is conceived exactly 53 days later in the same geographic area. Thomas returns home, determined to find his son Braden’s reincarnation. He looks up hospital records and figures out Braden’s reincarnation is a boy named René, who is now four years old, the same age as Braden when he died. Thomas tracks down René’s abusive father, who reveals his ex-wife took René to live in France. Thomas locates and befriends the lonely and neglected René. When René senses Thomas’ underlying sadness, Thomas reveals that he misses his son. René, who doesn’t remember his father, boldly asks if Thomas is his father. A conflicted Thomas responds that he is not. Heartbroken to see René’s disappointment, Thomas tells René that he knows his father very well, and that his father loves him very much and thinks about him every single day. Comforted, René tells Thomas that he must have been a really good father. Overjoyed, Thomas experiences catharsis and starts on his journey of healing that has been delayed for so long. Thomas returns home to his wife Sarah. For the first time in years, he sees her. The two reconcile and decide to move forward together. INCARNATIONS is a strong character- and idea-driven story about the world, science, and spiritualism, as well as an exploration of how people come to terms with their grief and arrive at hope. It’s a timeless story that explores questions that have remained deeply relevant throughout all of human history.