Heroin addiction teen drama ‘Sno Babies’ to begin filming in Philly next month
Last year, the ongoing opioid crisis result in more than 1,200 overdose deaths in Philadelphia.
An upcoming teen drama focusing on heroin addiction will begin filming here in Philadelphia next month.
Dubbed Sno Babies, the film stars Katie Kelly (Game of Silence) and Paola Andino (Every Witch Way) as a pair of 16-year-old best friends who battle their addictions to heroin, Deadline reports. Kelly's Kristen McKusker is a straight-laced honor student, while Andino's Hannah Reid is the story's resident rebel. The film is reportedly based on a true story.
"Unlike most films about heroin addiction, Sno Babies explores this horrible epidemic in America's suburbs, where teems have access to money and parents who are often too busy pursuing the American Dream to see what is happening right now in their own homes," director Bridget Smith said via a Kickstarter statement.
Currently, the film's creators are pursuing a $50,000 fundraising goal, which must be met by Nov. 8 to be successful. At the time of publication, the project raised about $38,000.
Last year, the ongoing opioid crisis result in more than 1,200 overdose deaths in Philadelphia. Opioids were detected in 88 percent of the cases, up from 80 percent in 2016.
In response to the crisis, city health officials have allowed the establishment of a safe-injection sites, a controversial concept that would create an area where users could go and inject heroin with medical staff onsite. Currently, Safehouse, a nonprofit, plans to open the city's first safe-injection site, though its location has not yet been selected.
As the Inquirer's Aubrey Whelan wrote earlier this month, however, the site is likely to be located in Kensington. Considered to be the epicenter of Philly's opioid epidemic, that area of the city has the highest overdose death rate in Philadelphia, and is reportedly home to half of the city's homeless population.
"I wish I could say our story is totally fabricated and far fetched, but I'd be lying," Smith wrote of the film on Kickstarter. "The reality is, the horror that plays out in Sno Babies happens every day, several times a day."
Sno Babies is one of many movies coming out that deal with addiction, including Beautiful Boy, in theaters now, starring Steve Carell trying to help his son (Timothee Chalamet) through meth addiction, and Ben is Back, which opened the Philadelphia Film Festival earlier this month.