A finished script, clean title, a real crew, owned equipment and a released prior feature. The raise buys the lead, the paper and the certificate — and the twenty days it takes to shoot it.
Donations run through From the Heart Productions, the film's 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor. The PayPal page carries their name. The money comes to UNDERBELLY. Tax-deductible as the law allows.
Donations run through From the Heart Productions, the film's 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor. Enter your amount on the PayPal page. From the Heart sends us your name and email with the receipt. That's how the rewards find you.
The story
His life stopped the day his daughter disappeared. Then a girl ran in front of his cab.
Saul Stein is a working-class father in his forties whose life stopped the day his daughter disappeared into the trafficking world. The system failed them. He now lives in the margins, sleepless, isolated, and consumed by her memory.
Fate places Roan in front of his cab — another girl running from the same darkness that took his daughter. What begins as an accident becomes a reckoning. Through Roan, Saul is forced to confront the truth he has been avoiding: his anger is not justice.
01The case weaves past and present together, and Drew knows the whole NOPD is covering up for something way worse than a dead pimp in a hotel room. His personal demons drag him into uncovering the truth, on duty, or off.02Roan, suddenly caught in a deeper web than she ever realized existed, must find a new way of life. But now the mob wants to keep her shut up. She won't be done in that easily.03The night that set it all off. She's the spitting image of Saul's murdered daughter. He's determined to not let anyone else die in the trap.04An uncontrollable act changes lives, politics, and a city that has hidden its dirty secrets for three hundred years.05Saul takes her away from the crime scene, because you know, she's a whore, a criminal according to polite society, and the system would eat her alive without batting an eye.06Now Saul has to try to figure it all out. They're living on the lam at a friend's cheap motel, waiting for the heat to die down.07Alone and desperate, they only have each other. With the world out to get them, Saul learns he really wants to live a life again, and he's not willing to die in the shell he had cast for himself.08Roan gets to be a kid again. The childhood stolen from her rushes to the surface, and she discovers herself, perhaps for the first time.09When Drew does catch up with them, he understands. He doesn't see justice being done by taking in two of the underworld's most destroyed victims. He discovers a cover story that could get them off scot-free.10And when Saul learns his drinking buddy, a friend of his family, his fishing partner, is really the son-of-a-bitch behind the whole damn thing, he's compelled to confront the man.11Saul struggles to do the right thing, but Tomlinson pushes all the right buttons. So Saul does what he has to, in the end.12Is Drew complicit? An accessory after the fact? A detective derelict in his duties? Or is he fighting the kind of evil that knows no system of justice will ever indict the truly guilty.
Every frame above is the film's own key art. The screenplay is finished — 87 pages, 91 scenes, contained to one city.««« Ask to read it »»»
The people
Four people. One city. Nobody clean.
Saul Stein
The driver
A working-class father in his forties whose life stopped the day his daughter disappeared into the trafficking world. The system failed them. He lives in the margins now — sleepless, isolated, consumed by her memory. Then Roan runs in front of his cab, and his anger finally has somewhere to go.
Roan
The girl
Neglected and abused by a life of drugs and incest, she ran away young and ended up with Pooky, her handler. What looked like protection became control — where she slept, worked, and who she belonged to. One night she wises up and reaches out for help, and collides with Saul Stein. The gangs that own her want her back to keep her silent, forever.
Detective Drew Riley
Homicide, NOPD
Came to New Orleans by way of Lagos, Nigeria, after his younger sister was trafficked through the Gulf and returned home dying of AIDS. The case was buried long before anyone powerful had to answer for it. Quiet, patient, relentless — he follows patterns other detectives miss: street pimps, paid cops, tampered evidence. He's determined to see justice fulfilled regardless of the system, the law, or anyone else who gets in his damn way.
J.T. Tomlinson
The power broker
A respected New Orleans power broker — wealthy, connected, untouchable. He speaks publicly of reform and family values while quietly protecting the trafficking network that feeds him money, influence, and control. Men like Pooky work the streets. Tomlinson owns the system behind them. The evidence is never clean enough to bring him down through official channels.
The money
$550,000. Seventy-six percent of it on the screen.
Full production, post and delivery. No lender, no gap, no financing contingency. The same core team writes, directs, photographs, lights and produces — real locations instead of builds, a compact package instead of a truck, nobody paid to stand around. Noir was always made this way. The money goes on the screen because there is nowhere else for it to go.
20
Shoot days · New Orleans
100%
Shot in Louisiana
87
Pages · 91 scenes · finished
Dec '26
Principal photography
Where every dollar goes
Above the line — writer, director, cast$121,000
Other / administration$55,500
Production — crew, locations, kit, 20 days$229,000
Contingency$47,000
Post-production$68,500
Cost of money / producer reserve$29,000
Cast, physical production and post come to $418,500 — 76% of the budget. The writer, director and producer fees are one fee to one person, and they defer first if the raise comes in short.
Already in hand
The scriptFinished feature. Contained neo-noir. 91 scenes, 87 pages.
Chain of titleLibrary of Congress and WGA registered. Ownership documented.
Writer, director, cinematographerEdward Holub — one fee, three departments.
Core crew committed on first dollarProduction coordinator and two heads of department.
The cinema packageOwned outright. Rented to the production at documented fair market value.
A finished, released prior featureRetracing the Footsteps of David Goodis — restored, released, premiered live.
Budget and scheduleLine-item topsheet and a 20-day board built from the script itself.
What the raise buys
The leadCasting opens the moment the first wave closes.
The entity and the paperUnderbelly Pictures LLC, the offering documents, the filing.
Louisiana certificationApplied for and granted before the first dollar of spend.
Twenty days in New OrleansPrincipal photography, entirely in state. December 2026.
The finishPost, delivery, audit, festival strategy, a sales agent on a finished picture.
The first nightsExhibition dates in summer 2027 — see The Road, below.
40%Louisiana film credit
Louisiana returns 40% of qualified in-state spend on this production — the 25% base credit plus the Louisiana-screenplay and resident-payroll uplifts it qualifies for. It is paid on the shoot, not on the sale — the one piece of the money that does not depend on an audience.
Pictures like this
Contained noirs at this budget get made. Then they get seen.
Independently financed crime pictures at or near this budget — including the ones that were paid for by private backers and by a crowd.
Brick2005 · neo-noir
$450,000budget
Nearly $4,000,000 worldwide. Sundance 2005 Special Jury Prize. Focus Features took distribution. A first-time director, no stars, one town.
Blood Simple1984 · Texas noir
$1,500,000budget
$4,300,000 worldwide, plus $1,700,000 on the 2000 re-release. Financed by a limited partnership of private backers outside the film business — dentists among them. It started a forty-year company.
Blue Ruin2013 · revenge noir
$420,000budget
$993,313 worldwide. FIPRESCI prize at Cannes, sold on site. $37,828 of the budget came from 438 Kickstarter backers. Still selling thirteen years on.
Worldwide gross, not producer receipts. Comparables show the range of outcomes at this budget tier; their results have no bearing on this film's.
The road
After the festivals, the film goes to the people it's about.
The plan: thirty dates, summer and fall 2027. A mobile LED cinema on a trailer the company owns, a coach that tows it, and the same small crew that made the film — fourteen festival anchors and sixteen partner and community nights between them, on the same road with the same rig.
The roomScreening, live act, bar, and the partner organization's call to action.
The safeguardA trained advocate on site and a referral pathway agreed before doors open.
The moneySponsors underwrite the road, not film investors. One hundred percent of what the nights raise goes to the partner organization.
Two entities, and they never share a checkbook: the film's equity never touches the tour, and what the nights raise for charity never touches the film. The tour runs when it is underwritten — the title sponsor, the foundations and the partner organizations are being assembled now, anywhere in the world the film can travel. That is one of the ways to help.
Who's making it
Edward Holub writes it, directs it, and shoots it.
One fee, three departments. The prior feature — Retracing the Footsteps of David Goodis, the noir novelist behind Dark Passage and Shoot the Piano Player — was restored, released, and premiered live. The camera package is owned, not rented. The crew that shoots this picture is the crew that keeps working between pictures.
Juke Joint Films is a New Orleans company built for exactly this: authored neo-noir, lean production as a method, and a direct relationship with the audience. Lean is not an apology. It is how noir was always made.
The slate — Underbelly · Down and Dirty · City of the Lost · Cassidy's Girl · Devil by the Toe · Wheels of Justice
Underbelly — production memo
ScriptFinished. 87 pp. 91 scenes.
TitleClean. LoC + WGA.
KitOwned outright.
CrewCoordinator + two HoDs committed.
Shoot20 days. New Orleans. Dec 2026.
Committed$100,000
Needed$450,000
— Put money in the picture.JJF · New Orleans
Invest — $5,000 and up
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