THE STAGE 32 LOGLINES

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RUNNING WITH THE WOLVES

RUNNING WITH THE WOLVES
By Jesse Roach

GENRE: Mystery, Drama
LOGLINE:

After losing her father, a young girl struggles through her mother's collapse, her own search for belonging, and an unshakable sense that her father is still trying to reach her.

SYNOPSIS:

Lily is only seven years old when her world changes forever. On warm evenings, she and her father, David, would sit together in the grass, listening to wolves howl in the distance. Under the glow of a blood moon, David would guide her imagination: "Close your eyes and run with the wolves." It was their sacred tradition, a way to connect to something bigger, wild, and eternal. But when David is killed in a sudden accident, Lily's enchanted childhood collapses. Her mother, unable to cope, spirals into bitterness and addiction, and Lily is forced to grow up without the joy and stability her father gave her.

As years pass, Lily struggles with anger, loneliness, and fractured relationships. The house and land she loved are abandoned, her mother drifts into self-destruction, and every blood moon becomes a painful reminder of what she lost. Yet she cannot shake the feeling that her father is still out there somehow, waiting for her. Whenever the red moon rises, she drives back toward her childhood home, closes her eyes, and imagines herself running with the wolves - always sensing her father running beside her, whispering fragments like "It has to be you."

Decades later, now thirty, Lily returns to the condemned remains of her family's home. Among the rubble of her memories, she finds the old fireplace and the loose brick where, as a child, she once discovered a folded note she couldn’t understand. On impulse, she writes her own farewell message - "Goodbye old house. Goodbye Dad. I love you! Always." - and hides it in the wall. Weeks later, while sorting through her late mother's belongings, she discovers the same note in her childhood jewelry box - aged, yellowed, and unmistakably the one she herself had just written.

This discovery unravels everything. On the night of another blood moon, Lily returns to the house, desperate for answers. She hides a warning note in the fireplace brick, begging her younger self to stop her father from leaving the night of the accident. At first, nothing happens, but when she sits outside, listening to the wolves, the impossible occurs: the ruined house transforms. The yard is alive again, glowing with light, laughter, and photographs of a life she never had - graduations, weddings, milestones with her father at her side. Then, impossibly, David himself steps onto the porch, older but alive, telling her he has been waiting for her every blood moon, hoping she would find her way back.

Lily realizes that her tradition with her father - their bond beneath the blood moon - was a bridge across time, a way for them to reach each other through grief and fate. In his hands, David carries the very note she had just hidden, proof that the loop has finally closed. Together, father and daughter embrace, both remembering two versions of life: the tragic one they endured, and the whole one they were always meant to share.

For Lily, the journey has never been about outrunning grief but about running toward love - the unbreakable, timeless bond between a father and his daughter, carried on the howl of wolves beneath a blood moon.

Jesse Roach

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Marcos Fizzotti

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Nate Rymer

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