Riley Keough and Clay Tweel join first-responder documentary Under Fire

Riley Keough and documentary maker Clay Tweel have joined Under Fire as executive producers, the backers who support a film and help guide it without running the daily shoot. Variety reported the appointments on 5 October. The project is a documentary from Brandon Kapelow. It focuses on a first responder and psychedelic therapy.

The film follows Rob, a fire captain in Idaho living with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. He turns to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, a treatment approach that pairs guided therapy with the supervised use of psychedelic drugs. The camera stays with him as he seeks relief and a way back to steady life.

The feature grew out of Kapelow's New York Times Op-Doc An Act of Service, a short opinion documentary made for the newspaper. Laurel Thomson produced the longer film for Long Holiday. It is Kapelow's first film as a director.

Keough is joined on the executive producer roster by Sacha Ben Harroche, Gina Gammell and Reef Oldberg, all credited for Keough's company Felix Culpa. Tweel is joined by Shannon E. Riggs for Parkside Films, according to Variety. The wider group also includes Andrew Hutcheson for Voyager, Terry David Fine, Ronald Richardson and Emily Richardson. Executive producers often bring finance, contacts or creative counsel.

Under Fire will play fall festivals as a title for acquisition. That means it arrives without a distributor and is open to offers. No buyer yet. An impact campaign will launch alongside those festival screenings. That is a planned outreach programme, separate from marketing, designed to take the issues in a film into schools, community groups and policy rooms.

Together Films is leading the strategy for that campaign, with support from Perspective Fund. CAA Media Finance represents the film for sales, with worldwide rights available, Variety reports. In plain terms, the agency is offering broadcasters, cinemas and streaming platforms in each territory the chance to buy the right to show it.

For audiences picking up this story, the shape is simple. A short newspaper documentary has become a feature. A first-time director has new, well-known backing. The next step is the festival circuit, where buyers decide what reaches wider screens.