HERLY is based on true events about a young woman who joined a cult and has to return to her childhood home to retrieve her money stash. At its core, it’s about siblings who experience the same childhood wounds and the different life choices they make. It’s about the complexity of family dynamics, examining the meaning of healing over a bowl of cereal.

The LA-based director Rachel Rambaldi says: 'Some more personal stories sit with you for a long time before you’re ready to tell them and HERLY was one for me. It took years and many drafts and versions for me to realize I couldn’t write it alone. It being a story about siblings, I realized I needed to have a second perspective that was not my own. With my co-writer Jon Walkup (who is a great friend and collaborator of mine) we were able to find the heartbeat of the story together.  Our connection as friends poured into the script and I think that ingredient was necessary to our writing process. I believe it helped us unlock something deeper that maybe had I written it with someone with whom I didn’t have such a personal relationship, I might have ended up back at my desk alone at 2AM spinning in loops trying to figure out what this story was really about.'

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