When I was 17 I lost my mom. I only have a handful of pictures and zero videos of her. A couple years ago, on my birthday, I got a text from a number I didn’t recognize. It simply said “happy birthday” with a YouTube link. I clicked it and my heart stopped. It was my mom. I had to pull over immediately. She was telling me how proud she was of me and how she wondered what I’d become. Maybe a policeman, a preacher, or even a clown. I couldn’t believe it. Well, it turns out the random phone number was my friend Jon’s dad, who had found this video on an old VHS tape they made before a 1999 school event. I was 16. This experience got me thinking... what if we could have one last conversation with someone we lost? That question led to the creation of the Crossing Over Express. It was my most personal film to date, and to my own surprise, reached more people than anything I had ever done. The film went viral and millions of people saw it within the first couple of weeks. Messages flooded in from people I had never met, but who were deeply touched by the story - especially those who had lost a loved one too. It was a good reminder to me that sometimes the most personal work is the most universal too. Big thanks to Frame.io for letting us tell this story. Mini-doc by @noamkroll and myself. The Crossing Over Express pinned to my profile.

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