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ALPENA — Kyle Maddux-Lawrence — a filmmaker featured at this year’s Thunder Bay International Film Festival, hosted by the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary’s (TBNMS) — says that the five day event allows filmmakers “to screen their work and be with the people who want to see it.”

Maddux-Lawrence is just one filmmaker who will have their work featured at the festival, which begins Wednesday and runs until Jan. 25. His films The Weight: Coming up for Air and Sanctuary: Beneath the Surface will be shown at the festival.

He explained that he first connected with TBNMS when he visited the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Center about a decade ago.

“We walked in and I thought ‘This is absolutely mind boggling and crazy … there has got to be a story here’,” Maddux-Lawrence said.

He said that year was when the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) Competition World Championship was at the sanctuary and he created a film about the competition.

Since then, he’s participated in the film festival over the years, showcasing various projects and creating connections.

“Connections from this festival have been so crucial not only to my career, but for my life,” Maddux-Lawrence said.

He explained that he first met Kevin Sheard, a member of the Warfighter Scuba Board of Directors, at a prior festival. That connection led to Maddux-Lawrence working in tandem with the Warfighter Scuba team to create his latest project, The Weight: Coming up for Air, which will be featured at this year’s festival.

Warfighter Scuba is a nonprofit that teaches combat-wounded veterans how to scuba dive, healing emotional and physical wounds. This past summer, three purple heart recipients from across the country traveled to Alpena to learn how to scuba dive at TBNMS.

Maddux-Lawrence said that The Weight: Coming up for Air is about the Warfighter Scuba participants and that the film documents how impactful the experience was for them. He said that the veterans who could “barely do daily functions” because of their emotional and physical wounds got to visit the sanctuary, learn to scuba dive, “and reconnect with themselves and others.”

“That trip quite literally changed their lives,” Maddux-Lawrence said. “They all said how shocked they were that they had never heard of this place.”

Sanctuary: Beneath the Surface, Maddux-Lawrence’s second film, documents the work that TBNMS employees and volunteers do to create experiences like the Warfighter Scuba participants had this past summer.

Maddux-Lawrence said that the film acts as a “mirror of the work they do.”

“The hidden value in the sanctuary is to make connections with organizations like Warfighter Scuba, that change lives, and save lives,” he said. “You can’t put a price on that.”

Kayla Wikaryasz can be reached at 989-358-5688 or kwikaryasz@TheAlpenaNews.com.