Arcadia University was represented at the Cannes Film Festival this year, when Ryan Regan ’13 and his production partner Derick Crucius had the world premiere of their short-film Charley Tucson on May 19.

“It’s a little surreal,” Regan said, who graduated with a BA in Communications with a focus in Video Production. “We’re excited to see who we meet and to grow our network. We want to continually push forward and we want to keep growing as film makers, so we felt that [submitting to Cannes] was something we wanted to do.”

The film, produced under the duo’s company Dead Pixel, was one of only 2,000 short-films from around the world accepted into the festival for the Short-Film Festival Corner. Charley Tucson is inspired by Regan and Crucius’s hometown, Wilkes-Barre, and a mass shooting that occurred in the 1980s. Regan said the film is a character study of the mindset of mass shooters, and that they hope it brings awareness to the issues of gun violence and mental health, “and how they go hand-in-hand.”

And while Charley Tucson has made it to Cannes, the duo isn’t stopping there. Already on their docket for production is a feature-length movie, which will begin pre-production this summer. Additionally, both are working on scripts for two more movies.

“What I really loved and took away from Arcadia is how thought provoking the courses were and how much it really pushed me to think outside the box,” Regan said. “That was very helpful to me as a creative person, to help push myself further. The education I got here was invaluable, and especially the experiences to be able to travel abroad. It really all helped lay the foundation for me.”