HIBISCUS | Death is not the End

HIBISCUS poster: Teresa and Ralph looking at each other in warm sunlight above the title; below it, Ralph reading against a headstone as the sun sets over the cemetery.

A cemetery worker reads a dead woman back to life. She has three days.

A dark, heart-warmingly strange romantic dramedy about forgiveness, love and letting go, shot in Los Angeles and Pasadena.

2020 · Feature · 1 hr 16 min · TV-MA

Official Selection Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival Regal Cinemas LA LIVE · 20 February 2016

Watch free on Tubi

The Story

A cemetery worker reads a dead woman back to life. She has three days.

HIBISCUS is a dark but heart-warmingly strange romantic dramedy. It is about a late-twenty-something cemetery worker named Ralph. Ralph is a quiet loner who spends most of his spare time experiencing a life he would like to have, through reading random books he blindly picks up at the local book store. Work, books, and caring for his dying estranged father from afar are all that he does. That is until one day, after being intrigued by the funeral of a young woman named Teresa, who had finally succumbed to an illness that kept her bedridden, Ralph decides to try reading one of the prayers from a book he read about bringing the dead back to life, over her grave.

To his bitter surprise it worked, and she is alive once again and healthy. He takes her to his apartment in Pasadena until they can figure out what to do. Once Teresa has come to some kind of understanding about what has taken place, she asks the question: how long do I have? They learn from the book that she has only three days to experience this new-found life, until she returns to the afterlife forever. Those three days will teach Ralph what life could be like if he would be open to forgiveness, love, and letting go.

Cast & Crew

Brandon Fisher

Ralph

Brandon Fisher is a Lees-McRae College graduate, born in Asheville, North Carolina. He started his acting career in more than 35 stage plays with numerous theaters and touring companies along the East Coast. Since moving to Los Angeles, Brandon has had the opportunity to work on television shows such as Criminal Minds and 24, as well as various independent films.

Mia Topalian

Teresa

Mia Topalian, as seen on All My Children, is a bright young actress with a range of film, theatrical, commercial and television experience. Graduating early with honors from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts with a B.F.A. in Drama, she has multi-disciplinary theatrical training at Playwrights Horizons with emphasis on generating original material, as well as advanced on-camera training through Stonestreet Studios. She has worked on numerous projects including Indy Horror, Project October and Took a Road, opposite Taylor Negron.

Brian Fitzpatrick

Wyatt

Brian Fitzpatrick played the Kyrian leader Tedran in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Living Witness." He played the recurring roles of Mitchell "Mitch" Beck in All My Children, Rick Stewart Alden in Loving, Dr. Kenneth Collins in The Young and the Restless, Roscoe in General Hospital, and a casino manager in The Bold and the Beautiful. His other television and film work includes Castle, Criminal Minds, One West Waikiki, The Sentinel, Night Man, V.I.P., American Dreams, Navy NCIS, Basket Case 2, The Darwin Conspiracy and My Femme Lady.

Charlie Farr

Ron

Charlie grew up in a small town in New Jersey, where he worked with children in after-school programs for the YMCA and played competitive tennis. He took the leap to the West Coast and completed a degree in English Literature and Theatre at the University of Southern California. He is best known for his "That's Amazing" face in Geico commercials, his Axe campaign with Mike Tyson, and the film Miss India America, starring Hannah Simone. Charlie has also been an improv and comedy performer for more than ten years.

Erika Ringor

Nurse Jackie

Erika Ringor's big break came when she was cast as Sidra O'Neal opposite Sanaa Lathan in Spike Lee's Love & Basketball. The character touched fans worldwide and gave Ringor international notoriety both as an actress and in the world of basketball. Her films include Queen of Media, Across the Hall and R. Kelly's musical saga Trapped in the Closet. She has held recurring roles on Law & Order: Los Angeles and the CBS series Moonlight as Detective Theresa Novak, as well as Cold Case, Ghost Whisperer, Hawthorne, The Forgotten and Sons of Anarchy.

Mikaya Fisher

Laney

Mikaya Fisher is a Los Angeles native who was introduced to the entertainment business at the age of one, when she played Eva in the Lifetime feature film Stolen Child.

Tawan Bazemore

Director · Director of Photography

Tawan was raised in Paterson and South Orange, New Jersey. His appetite for foreign films, film noir and epic-driven films grew as he came to understand the craft of making movies. After years of pouring over books on cinematography, a course in color science, and two summers studying cinematography at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, he began his career in filmmaking. Since 2000 he has directed several short films and color-graded numerous films, music videos and commercials throughout the United States and Europe. In 2008 a short film he directed premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. He lives in Los Angeles and works as a colorist, digital workflow consultant and director.

Lamont Couch

Screenplay · Producer · Executive Producer · Casting

Lamont Couch had a promising career in politics as a public relations and mediation specialist for a well-known member of Congress and a governor. His creative bug, which started as a hobby, got the better of him, and he penned an idea he had for a story about the death penalty system in Chicago. He promised his mother he would write the treatment, sent it to twenty agents, and told himself that if nobody answered he would stay in politics. Three answered within a week and one signed him. He left a job paying $85,000 a year to move to Los Angeles and learn the film business as a background actor at $8 an hour. He later produced one of his own scripts on his own dime: the mini-feature Agoraphobia, well received at several festivals and made for under $10,000. HIBISCUS is his first full feature.

Credits

Adler & Associates Entertainment, Inc. and LTC Productions present Brandon Fisher and Mia Topalian
with Brian Fitzpatrick, Charlie Farr and Erika Ringor
introducing Mikaya Fisher
Casting by Lamont Couch · Original Score by Luigi Pulcini
Costume Designer Audrey Couch · Production Designer Andrew J. Barron
Director of Photography Tawan Bazemore
Associate Producer Melissa K. Webb
Executive Producers Lamont Couch, Brandon Greene and Marie Adler
Produced by Lamont Couch
Screenplay by Lamont Couch
Directed by Tawan Bazemore