Chicken Scratch

An eleven-year-old child navigates a day in his life of rural poverty while his mother is stuck at work.

Andrea “Drea” Stoney, a queer, Deaf poet, feels isolated at her grandmother’s repass, surrounded by a distant family uninterested in ASL. Seeking refuge in quiet corners of the family brownstone, her world is further shaken when her estranged father Samuel—temporarily released from prison after 20 years to mourn his mother—arrives. Bound by grief and blood, father and daughter must confront their strained relationship and find fragile reconciliation before his return behind bars.

Newly pregnant, Cheyenne flees in the night from her abuser. Back in her hometown she faces her embittered mother and vagabond sister. There, she navigates a complex family dynamic while rekindling her forgotten dreams - looking for the strength to break her trauma bond and perhaps raise her baby on her own.