Movie poster showing man with back to camera. He stand on a dock looking at a large pond. He is dressed in a suit with a suitcase on the dock next to him. He looks toward the predawn light. On the movie poster it says "An Alternate Pond" across the center. Under that is says "Every Choice Leaves a Ripple."

An Alternate Pond

A man takes his boat out on a pond. The ritual is familiar: the casting, the waiting, the stillness. But somewhere between the water’s surface and the depths below, the present begins to blur into dream.

In essence, An Alternate Pond is a meditation on the lives we didn’t live. Through surreal imagery, the film follows a man as he drifts between present and past, waking and sleeping, the life he has and the ones he imagines he might have had. Along the way, a bedroom appears in an open pasture where cattle graze. Elsewhere, a lantern illuminates a path through dark woods. Later, a mirror hangs suspended in an empty field at dawn. Together, these images carry the weight of choices made.

At the heart of the film is a question we rarely speak aloud but often carry with us: What if I had chosen differently? Notably, the film doesn’t offer easy resolution. Instead, it invites the viewer to sit with the question—to feel the pull of regret and the possibility of release.

The voiceover, written by Amalia Wiatr Lewis, addresses a fish directly, a creature whose existence is reduced to the simplest of choices: bite or don’t bite, life or death. Within that simplicity, there’s envy and longing. Meanwhile, the words move like water, circling back on themselves, building toward a stillness that can only be found by swimming through the turbulence first.

As the years pass, the future narrows while the past expands into a vast terrain one steps through carefully, avoiding the places where decisions went wrong or where different choices might have led to different lives. The film asks whether it’s possible to stop that wandering and simply be present. Whether stillness can only be found by accepting that there is only one pond. This is a film about what a person carries, and what happens when it’s finally set down.

Director, C. Thomas Lewis; Writer, Amalia Wiatr Lewis; Music, Tim Brickley, Visual Effects, Mike Lulgjuraj

In an elevated and wide shot of a pasture during magic hour, a man lies in a made up bed with a lit lamp next to him on a bedside table.
A man walks through a dark forest holding a lantern out in front of him.
It is dawn in a pasture and a man looks into a mirror as he ties his tie.

Behind the Making

This film began in 2021, when several of its images came to me in dreams, or in the half-waking space between sleep and consciousness. I had just completed a collaboration with my daughter, Amalia Wiatr Lewis, about the grief she carried after losing her mother to a brain tumor. That film, possible:, layered an internal monologue over images to explore psychological terrain. I knew I wanted to work with Amalia again in the same form. (That film, its trailer, and a behind-the-scenes documentary can be seen here.)

When I began developing An Alternate Pond, I met extensively with Amalia to discuss the themes I was exploring and the tone I envisioned. After I had assembled an early edit, I sent it to her and waited. What she returned transformed the film. Her idea to frame the voiceover as a direct address to a fish gave the piece its conceptual angle. That simple shift turned abstract rumination into something much more intimate. It’s the kind of creative leap that reminds me why collaboration matters.

My brother Stephen, who stars in An Alternate Pond, raised fish on our family farm for over thirty years. It was physically demanding work that took a toll on his body and at times his psyche. Over the years, I heard him give voice to some of the thoughts this film explores. The film isn’t about my brother, exactly, but his experience became a springboard for exploring themes of regret, the weight of accumulated choices, and the quiet search for peace that accompanies aging. Like the man in the film, we all carry a suitcase full of the lives we didn’t live. The question is whether we can ever set it down.

You can read more about the film at my blog.

A man walks away from camera along the plank to a dock. He carries a suitcase as he walks toward the rising sun. 
Full Credits:
Featuring 		Stephen Lewis
Director		C. Thomas Lewis
Writer 			Amalia Wiatr Lewis
Music			Tim Brickley
Visual Effects	Mike Lulgjuraj
Foley Design	Kat Thomas