Buried Under Years of Dust
After years of minimal speech, Emily Grodin, a woman with autism, finds new ways to express herself.
About the Documentary
For the first 25 years of her life, Emily Grodin, a minimally speaking woman with autism in Los Angeles, scarcely communicated. Seeking alternatives, Emily’s parents turned to a controversial method of assisted-typing that had been dismissed for decades. In a turn of events, she began to express herself—not in single words, but in sentences and paragraphs, through essays and poetry.
The Filmmakers
Sophie Sartain
Sophie Sartain is the co-director and producer of Seeing Allred, which premiered at Sundance and is on Netflix. Among Sartain’s credits is her ITVS-funded film Mimi and Dona, named one of the best TV shows of the year by The New York Times. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and New Day Films.
Marta Kauffman
Prior to Grace and Frankie, Netflix’s longest-running series, Kauffman was best known for co-creating the hit show Friends. She has produced several documentaries including Seeing Allred for Netflix. Kauffman has received the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Lifetime Achievement in Television Writing and the Humanitas Kaiser Award.
Robbie Tollin
Tollin is an Emmy Award-winning TV and film producer, currently the producing partner of Marta Kauffman at Okay Goodnight. The company has produced Netflix’s Grace and Frankie, and Seeing Allred, about civil rights attorney Gloria Allred. The company has several TV and film projects in development for a variety of streamers and networks.
Hannah KS Canter
After joining Okay Goodnight, Canter developed Grace and Frankie and produced Seeing Allred. She and Marta Kauffman have also co-written a feature and several pilots, including the comedy DINKS for Amazon, on which she serves as co-creator and co-showrunner. Canter has held posts at StudioCanal, Katahdin Foundation, and Tollin Productions.
Molly Arkin
Arkin joined Okay Goodnight in 2017. She was an associate producer on Grace and Frankie and worked with the team on the feature documentary Seeing Allred for Netflix. Arkin covers Okay Goodnight’s slate of passion-driven development projects, including the improv-comedy pilot DINKS for Amazon, on which she is a co-producer.