Darkness. 
Paranoia. 
Exotic animals. 
Gunshots. 
Hospitality. 
Lady-sleuths. 
Murder.

All in a night’s work.

Minutes into his first night on the job at the formerly glorious Hotel Renoir, naive twenty-something Ares receives a complaint from a guest who is convinced his neighbor has been murdered. Confused and paranoid, things only get messier when the mysterious housekeeper, Paco, tries to… clean up.

An absurd chain of events is set in motion, bringing the ever more bleary-eyed Ares into the middle of a decades-old mystery that he can only hope to solve by sunrise.

You'll want to find out how this ends up.

Here are the seven potential reasons you want to dedicate your support to bringing this film into existence:

1. You know Will, Lisa, Katie, Ariana, Shane, Julia, or Sarah and think they are amazing.
2. You think the movie sounds legitimately intriguing and you want to find out how it ends.
3. You love indie film.
4. You enjoy dark comedy murder mysteries and often think your life is one.
5. You're intrigued by the idea of a poet producing a film. Can it be done?
6. You're tired of Quentin Tarantino films and miss Alfred Hitchcock.
7. You're filthy rich and have nothing better to do. (Call us)

From the Writer/Director, William A Krieg

Having spent six years working the overnight at a hotel - over twenty percent of my life thus far - it has become my personal endeavor to tell the stories of the odd occurrences that happen in the middle of the night - the strange things that take place during those windless hours when most decent folks are sleeping.  There’s something thrilling about the overnight, and, at the same time, something so terribly maddening: is the world around me slipping gradually into lunacy?  Or am I just dead tired?  It’s usually some sort of inharmonious medley of both, which is something I will attempt to capture with Hotel Renoir.  

Will and I have been friends since we were barely more than kids working at the hostel in San Francisco. Now, we are both pursuing our callings in New York City, and I consider myself honor-bound to make this happen. As a feminist and strong supporter of better representation of women in media, I made it a priority to work with Will to incorporate more women into the film, so it now passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors. The more men and women that we support who are willing to change their stories for equal and empowering representation, the better the world will be.

From the Producer, Katie Schiller 

What attracted me to “Hotel Renoir” is it’s use of a fun, stylized neo-noir genre and the unique characters - particularly Ares, whose story is loosely (emphasis on loosely!) based on the writer/director’s years of experience working the night-shift at a hostel. I love stories that draw on personal experiences in an exaggerated, out-of-the-box, fun sort of way. The way we interpret and dramatize our own experiences in our retellings often says more about who we are than anything else.

From the Line Producer, Ariana DiValentino

What We Need

It costs a lot of money to make even a short film set in the middle of the night, but it's worth it. We have support from a student grant and through Tisch, but to reach our minimal operating budget of $14,400 we still need $5,000 in support from people. Real, human, living individuals. The cast and crew are all working on a volunteer basis, but your contributions will afford us luxuries such as these:

• Equipment rentals: $750
  
• Production design: $770
  
• Location: $1,000
  
• Transportation: $400
  
• Food: $2,080
  

The Impact

Risks & Challenges