Chicago Pilot ‘Nobody F*cking Leaves’ to Premiere at Dances with Films New York

The premiere is here for a promising Chicago pilot. Windy City-based Scofflaw Films’ TV pilot Nobody F*cking Leaves will hold its national premiere as an official selection of Dances with Films New York, an indie bi-coastal film festival now in its 28th year. Nobody F*cking Leaves will be screened as part of the festival’s pilots block at the Regal Union Square on January 16th, 2026.

The pilot’s director, John Mossman, is no stranger to Dances with Films. Nobody F*cking Leaves is his third project to premiere at the highly regarded indie film festival. Mossman’s first film in the festival, Into the Wake, garnered the coveted Industry Choice Award.  

Nobody F*cking Leaves filmed in the Chicagoland area in late 2024 and early 2025. The pilot’s primary locations were in the Chicago suburban locales of Northbrook, Elk Grove Village and Lockport.

Nobody F*cking Leaves, featuring award-winning talent on both sides of the camera, is a stand-alone short film that also serves as a proof of concept for an episodic. The story follows Riley, an unremarkable woman living a life of comfort, with a secret so deep not  even she remembers it. But when she’s abducted by the family she ran away from years earlier, it all comes rushing back, along with some pretty badass powers she’s not in full control of.  

The ensemble cast includes Chicago actors Tiffany Bedwell, Jennifer Jelsema, John Mossman, David Pasquesi, and Dan Waller. Click here for the full cast.

Executive producers include Will Meyers and the aforementioned Jelsema. This film was edited by Ana Christian and lensed by Christopher Rejano. Click here for the full crew.

The TV pilot is the latest from Mossman, an award-winning Chicago filmmaker whose most recent feature film, Good Guy with a Gun, claimed countless festival laurels and numerous awards en route to earning American and International distribution.  

Mossman, also a Joseph Jefferson Award-winning actor, shared with SCREEN, “My interest in collective dreams  both waking and sleeping compelled me to create a story exploring the shifting sands of memories and truths we construct. Our conditioned denial of human duality, however, comes with a cost as we embrace a limited picture of who we are, raising the question — what powers are we willing to repress in order to fit into the world we find ourselves in?” 

Nobody F*cking Leaves was produced by SCOFFLAW FILMS in association with JOURNEYWORK ENTERTAINMENT, a Chicago based post-house offering a full range of visual post-production services for independent films and advertising, a collaboration that also brought Good Guy with a Gun, Fitting Descriptions, and the upcoming feature film, Line Cooks.

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