Telluride, Colorado, June 25, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Between the Mountain and the Sky, a documentary featuring nonprofit BlinkNow Foundation and its Co-Founder and CEO Maggie Doyne, premiered in May at Mountainfilm festival, in Telluride, Colorado, earning critical acclaim and clinching both the Audience Choice Award and Student Choice Award.
The premiere was attended by BlinkNow Co-Founders Doyne and Tope Malla, Director Jeremy Power Regimbal, and young adults who have graduated from BlinkNow’s Kopila Valley School in Nepal.
Early reviews have praised Doyne, Regimbal, Malla, and their work while also hailing the uniqueness of this humanitarian story. Telluride Inside calls the film "an intimate documentary spanning nearly two decades, traversing the landscapes of Nepal, the Netherlands, America, and Canada."
Stephen Saito on MoveableFest.com highlights the intimacy of watching Doyne’s struggle with grief and her tension between two cultures, calling it "unusually refreshing when it doesn’t linger on the selfless work that Doyne has done, but provocatively asks at what point she needs to protect herself from giving too much to be useful.”
BlinkNow has long been known for its focus on quality relationships with those people it serves in Nepal, as well as with supporters, volunteers, and donors across the globe. This was evidenced by a large number of BlinkNow “extended family” who traveled to Telluride to watch the film premiere and celebrate its release with the founders.
Director Jeremy Power Regimbal, who is also featured in the film and married to Doyne, was overwhelmed with the outpouring of excitement and attendees from the BlinkNow supporter base and Mountainfilm audiences, who traveled from across the U.S. and globally to attend the premiere. “I am just so grateful… without humans that are taking risks and living the way that Maggie and Tope live, there’s no film. I was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time and feel so blessed to be part of this family.”
Doyne expressed her gratitude as well as her hopes for the future at a premiere party hosted by BlinkNow. “We have the best people in the world who have walked us through this story of love and are standing here today. I hope the world will see that loss is not the end, that the hard parts of life are not the end. I want people to be reminded that love is the greatest healing force we have. And if we take care of children, children take care of the community, the country, and the world.”
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More information:
Between the Mountain and the Sky follows Maggie Doyne’s journey from a childhood in New Jersey to a high school gap year and world travels, which led her to volunteer in India alongside eventual Nepalese Co-Founder Tope Malla, and to visit Nepal. Doyne’s life was changed by meeting the children of Surkhet, Nepal, and she began to pursue a compassionate vision to ensure that every child is safe, educated, and loved. As they cultivated relationships and listened to the needs of the people in this region, Doyne and Malla collaborated with the community to establish a children’s home for those without families, a school for children who cannot afford education, a women’s empowerment center, and a host of other programs that together create a model for comprehensive and sustainable community development.
Maggie Doyne was named the CNN Hero of the Year in 2015, has been featured in Forbes and the New York Times, and, together with a team of caregivers and teachers, has helped to raise more than 80 children and educate more than 600 students in Nepal. She is the author of a memoir also named Between the Mountain and the Sky: A Mother’s Story of Love, Loss, Healing, and Hope.
The film is directed by Jeremy Power Regimbal. Regimbal’s feature-film directorial debut, In Their Skin, premiered at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival. He has also worked with global brands like MasterCard, Nike, Chevrolet and CitiBank. Regimbal co-founded The Lab Magazine, a print and digital publication distributed in over 25 countries. He now lives between Nepal and the USA, focusing on telling stories that matter via MPWR CONTENT.
Between the Mountain and the Sky is produced by Duplass Brothers Productions (DBP), award-winning filmmakers Mark Duplass, Jay Duplass and Mel Eslyn. DBP creates original projects for film, television and digital media. In January DBP premiered the pilot to their series “Penelope,” created by Mark and Eslyn, at 2024's Sundance Film Festival. Their most recent release, the docu-series “American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders,” debuted at #4 in the U.S. on Netflix. Upcoming releases include Morrisa Maltz's Jazzy, which they produced with Lily Gladstone, Nnamdi Asomugha's The Knife, and the third season of HBO's “Somebody Somewhere.”
The BlinkNow Foundation provides an education and a loving, caring home for at-risk children. The foundation also provides community outreach to reduce poverty, empower women, improve health, and encourage sustainability and social justice -- it fulfills its mission by providing financial support and management oversight to the Kopila Valley Children's Home and award-winning Kopila Valley School in Surkhet, Nepal. In addition to the home and school, Kopila Valley runs a Health & Wellness program, Women's Center, home for at-risk girls, Futures Program for career readiness, and integrated Sustainability Program across all initiatives.
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