Still we Survive

Directed & Produced by: Jesse Dana

Stage:
- Pre-production
Location:
- California, United States
Updated: April 4, 2026
Project Type:
- Series
Project Style:
- Generative AI,
- Hosted
Theme Subject:

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Logline

Still We Survive is an animated interview series about people in recovery. Each conversation traces a single life: what shaped them, how they survived, and who they are now. The through line is one most people have never heard: that addiction isn’t a failure. It’s what surviving looks like.

Synopsis

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Still We Survive is an animated interview series about people in recovery. Each conversation traces a single life: what shaped them, how they survived, and who they are now.

In recovery rooms, you hear the same story over and over. Not the same events, but the same shape. Someone grows up in a home where something essential is missing or broken. They learn to cope. The coping works until it doesn’t. By the time the world calls it addiction, the person has been surviving for years.

The culture offers two ways to understand addiction: as a moral failing or as a brain disease. Neither tells the story that recovery communities actually know. What’s missing is the person. Still We Survive exists to make that visible by letting it emerge through longform interviews. The show will feature 26 interviews a year spread over weekly 30 minute episodes.

The animation pipeline is built on generative AI tools, making it possible for the first time to produce a show at this scale on an independent documentary budget. The through line is one most people have never heard: that addiction isn’t a failure. It’s what surviving looks like.

Created by Jesse Dana, an award-winning filmmaker and cinematographer whose projects have premiered at Sundance, Tribeca, and Cannes, and whose films have spanned countless social justice subjects. Still We Survive is currently in pre-production and seeking funding, fiscal sponsorship, and distribution partnerships.

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Background

Still We Survive is designed for a media environment in which audiences are actively seeking sustained, trust-based relationships with storytellers rather than one-off viewing experiences. Platforms like YouTube have increasingly become destinations for long-form, episodic nonfiction, where viewers return over time to voices that feel credible, intimate, and consistent. This shift creates space for documentary work that privileges depth, continuity, and

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Public conversation around addiction and mental health has expanded, yet representation remains narrow. Stories tend to focus on moments of crisis or transformation, leaving the ongoing experience of survivorship largely unseen. This project addresses that gap by centering people in recovery as they continue to live, reflect, and adapt over time. The series emphasizes resilience as a sustained practice rather than an endpoint, aligning with audience interest in honest, process-oriented storytelling.

The anonymous animated format enables participation from individuals who would not otherwise speak publicly due to professional, familial, or personal risk. By protecting identity while preserving embodied presence through motion-driven animation, the series expands both access and candor. This approach supports ethical storytelling while maintaining emotional specificity and documentary integrity.

Production is intentionally scalable and repeatable. Interviews are conducted remotely using high-quality video conferencing tools, allowing for geographic reach and consistent output. Interview footage is used as motion reference to drive animated characters, creating a transparent pipeline that minimizes artifice while supporting procedural efficiency. This structure makes the project well suited to episodic release and long-term audience engagement.

The target audience includes documentary viewers and listeners, people directly or indirectly affected by addiction and recovery, and audiences drawn to reflective, character-driven nonfiction. For industry partners, Still We Survive offers a formally distinct series with a sustainable production model and clear potential for building durable audience relationships across platforms that value continuity, trust, and time.

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Participants

Jesse Dana

Host / Creator

Participant

Jesse Dana

Host / Creator

Jesse Dana is a cinematographer and documentary filmmaker whose work explores the space between observation and empathy, where documentary objectivity meets narrative truth. Projects he has lensed have received national News and Documentary Emmy nominations, a Peabody Award, and premiered at Sundance, Tribeca, and Cannes.

Drawing and painting long before he ever held a camera, Jesse first turned to image-making as a refuge from chaos outside his control. Over time, storytelling became both a way to be seen and a way to bear witness for others. Now two decades into his career, his practice has evolved into a quiet act of restoration, shaped by long-standing proximity to addiction, recovery, and the people who live within those realities.

Jesse has spent years working in spaces shaped by addiction, including recovery communities and prisons, where trust, patience, and ethical care are not abstract values but daily requirements. He has lived alongside addiction and addicts for much of his life, an experience that informs how he listens, how he asks questions, and how he builds environments where people can speak without fear of exposure or judgment.

As the creator and host of Still We Survive, Jesse brings this lived familiarity into a long-form interview practice grounded in presence rather than performance. He approaches the series as a collaborative process, using documentary craft to create space for reflection, resilience, and the ongoing work of surviving with honesty and dignity.

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Style & Tone

Still we Survive is designed first and foremost to be deeply compelling. It draws on stories of hardship, survival, and change not as issues to be examined, but as the original material of storytelling itself. These are foundational human narratives, inherently dramatic, emotionally charged, and engaging because they reflect how people actually move through the world. The audience is invited in through curiosity and momentum, not obligation.

While the work carries a

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While the work carries a clear social awareness around addiction and recovery, that intention does not lead the experience. The primary goal is for people to want to watch, to stay with the story, and to feel pulled forward by the honesty, tension, and specificity of each voice. Broader social meaning emerges naturally through sustained attention to lived experience.

The visual language is restrained, human, and intentionally approachable. The project uses a modern 2D animated style with simplified color planes, visible brushwork, and softened edges that allow figures to blend gently into their environments. This abstraction removes unnecessary visual detail and directs attention toward voice, expression, and story.

Animation functions as a container for intimacy and continuity. By stepping away from literal realism, it creates space for projection and identification, allowing viewers to see themselves in the stories being told. The illustrated host provides a steady visual anchor across episodes, conveying warmth, intelligence, and trust, even at small scale.

The aesthetic draws from documentary sensibility and painterly animation. Color palettes are limited and cohesive, contrast is controlled, and imperfection is embraced as part of the texture. The design supports narratives of identity, disruption, and survival in a way that feels honest, engaging, and emotionally resonant over time.

The result is a project that feels safe enough to sit with difficult material, but compelling enough to keep watching.

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Team

Jesse Dana

Director & Producer

Team

Jesse Dana

Director & Producer

Jesse’s work has garnered two national News and Documentary Emmy nominations and a Peabody Award. Many of his projects have appeared in festivals all over the world including Sundance, Tribeca and Cannes. Jesse’s esthetic sits at the intersection of documentary objectivity and narrative subjectivity. He believes that storytellers should lean into their unique perspectives to find the authentic truths at the heart of the stories they are telling, and their creative and visual choices should reflect an empathetic understanding of their subjects. It is through this process that the audience can have a deeper connection with the images flickering in front of them. Jesse was drawing and painting before he can remember. Art started out as a safe haven from chaos outside his control. Then gradually it became a way to be seen and valued in the world. Now almost 20 years into his career Jesse’s work has become a way to help others do what he could not; a gift he can give to his younger self and to the people who find themselves on the other side of his lens — the gift of being seen.

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Our Ask

At this stage, the project is actively seeking collaborators, partners, and financial support to help bring Still We Survive into its next phase.

We are looking to connect with collaborators who have personal experience with addiction or recovery, whether as individuals in recovery, family members, or people who have lived alongside addiction in meaningful ways. Lived proximity is central to the ethos of the project, and we are especially interested in creative partners who bring both professional skill and personal understanding to the work.

We are also seeking collaborators and partners in the AI and emerging technology space. The project relies on an animation pipeline that uses AI-assisted tools to translate long-form interviews into animated performance while preserving honesty, nuance, and human presence. We are interested in partnerships with companies or organizations that see value in supporting ethically grounded, story-driven applications of these technologies, whether through funding, technical collaboration, or sponsorship.

In addition, we are seeking funding to support continued development, production, and refinement of the series. Financial support will directly enable additional interviews, animation development, editorial work, and the creation of finished episodes that can serve both as a proof of concept and as the foundation for a longer-running body of work.

More broadly, we are looking for partners who believe in the value of sustained listening, long-term storytelling, and projects that prioritize trust and depth over speed. This is an invitation to help shape a series that is culturally relevant, formally distinctive, and built to endure.

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