We’ve always loved film. We’ve always cared about emotional truth and telling stories that make people feel something. And we’ve always been drawn to interesting people who’ve built a life around conviction, craft, curiosity, or some inner pull they chose to take seriously. People whose lives make us look at the world a little differently.

This series sits right at the intersection of those things.

Portraits of Another Life is our way of exercising our artistic instincts while telling stories that feel meaningful to us. It gives us a reason to slow down, spend time with people we find fascinating, and make films that are driven less by trend or noise and more by curiosity, humanity and feeling.

The people in this series aren’t all the same, and that’s the point. What connects them is that they’ve chosen to live a little differently. They’ve shaped their lives around something personal and real, whether that’s art, land, craft, purpose, freedom, family, or a different definition of success.

We wanted to launch this newsletter because not everything fits inside the film itself.

The YouTube series is where the finished stories live. This space is where we can share more of what surrounds them — reflections from the process, photographs, thoughts we couldn’t quite fit into the episodes, and the deeper questions these people and their lives bring up for us.

More than anything, we hope this project does what our favorite films have always done for us: open something up. A feeling. A question. A sense of possibility. A reminder that there are many ways to build a life, and that the most meaningful ones are often the ones shaped with intention.

We’re really glad you’re here.

— Emil & Arnelle