Cure CF Campaign Film | Nonprofit Video Production Louisville

The number that matters most in a fight like this is the one on the fundraising thermometer — so that's where I'll start. Cure CF is a Louisville nonprofit founded by parents of children with cystic fibrosis, and over the years they've raised millions toward a cure. We were proud to help them tell the story that keeps those dollars coming.

Where our companion film, CF Champion, zeroes in on Cameron and his family, this piece pulls back for the wider view: family after family, the bombshell of diagnosis, the daily reality of CF, the hope of new treatments and local clinical trials, and a parent-led, all-volunteer board that will, in their own words, "literally do anything" to give their kids the best care. Cameron is in this film too — one face among many in a community that refuses to quit.

A film like this lives or dies on trust. We sat down with one family after another, capturing interviews honest enough to carry the weight of the subject and warm enough to carry the organization's spirit — a group whose work ends exactly where they stand: they won't stop until CF stands for Cure Found.

Production Challenge

We filmed this at Cure CF's request during the height of COVID, and that came with a responsibility we took seriously. People living with cystic fibrosis have compromised, sensitive immune systems — and these families opened their own front doors to let us in. That trust set the bar. We built every protocol around one non-negotiable: we were not going to be the people who carried COVID into the homes of immunocompromised families who had invited us in. Distance, masking, gear handling, crew size — we stayed sharp on all of it, every shoot day. Careful enough to get the footage, careful enough to keep everyone safe.

About This Project
Client: Cure CF
Type: Nonprofit Campaign Film, Fundraising Video
Location: Louisville, KY
Services: Documentary interviews, nonprofit storytelling, field production, editing

Louisville's Best Nonprofit Video Production Company
John Flower Productions has told mission-driven stories for nonprofits and foundations since 2007. Ready to talk about your next project? Contact us.

Video Transcript:

My name is Joey. My wife is Jessica. We have a son, Luke, who's 13 years old and has cystic fibrosis. When we found out that Luke had cystic fibrosis, it was a bombshell to us. I'm not a big crier, and I think I cried for almost two weeks straight. We finally dug out of that hole, both emotionally and physically, and then started getting involved with charitable endeavors for cystic fibrosis, which led up to us founding Cure CF in 2015 with a few other families.

My name is Brina Wicker, and I have boy-girl twins. They're two and a half years old, and they both have cystic fibrosis. My husband and I are navigating that life right now.

My name's Zach. My wife is Courtney. Our son is Cameron. He's 13, and he has cystic fibrosis.

I'm Julia. My two-year-old daughter, Hazel, has cystic fibrosis. She was diagnosed with CF in utero, and Julia started reaching out, and it put us in touch with the families at Cure CF. Sarah and I have been with Cure CF since the beginning. We had our first baby, and they called us a week later to tell us that they thought that she had cystic fibrosis.

I'm Deryl. This is my wife, Meredith. We have a six-year-old son named Samuel, who fights cystic fibrosis every single day. When your child's given a diagnosis like that, you think it's a life sentence — that their days are numbered.

Cystic fibrosis is a defect in a protein that sits on the cell surface. Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease. It's inherited — both the mother and the father have to have the gene for it. CF is a progressive, life-shortening disease. A person with cystic fibrosis, their body doesn't process salt in the same way that a normal body does. It creates thick, sticky mucus that can clog up your lungs. It also affects the pancreas. It affects the liver, and it has mental health effects as well for kids and patients with CF. It really affects just about every part of the body — pretty much any of your internal organs. And there's not a cure.

Cure CF was founded by a group of parents here in Louisville, and coincidentally enough, was founded over a beer — as a lot of good things always start with a beer. We're different from a lot of fundraising groups that are paid staff. We're all volunteers. And the reason we support the mission so aggressively is because our kids' lives are at stake. Being a parent-led board, I think, makes us more successful. Because we have that motivation, we will literally do anything to give our kids the best care. It gives a different perspective when you have people who are fighting that fight every day — who are getting up at 6:00 AM and giving their child an hour and a half of treatments, and then they're doing it again at 4:30 when they get home from school, and then sometimes doing it again that night. And that's what's so powerful about our board: when we come home from board meetings, we get to see our motivation laying in their bed asleep. What better motivation is there?

Our mission here is to cure CF, as our name suggests, but also to provide great quality of life and quality of care for our kiddos and for other folks in this community with cystic fibrosis. We also want to make sure that kids that are going to be born this year and next year with CF have a different outlook, have a different hope, than maybe we were given when we got the diagnosis. We just want to save our kids' lives. We just want to bring in as much money as we can and funnel it through these research projects to find a cure.

Clinical trials are the basis for these new drugs, which are going to extend our children's lives significantly. The fact that people in Kentucky can participate in clinical trials without having to drive to Cincinnati or Indianapolis is huge. It's starting to put us — Louisville — in the center of the discussion as far as finding a cure. We only move the needle forward by having these clinical trials. So the money that we're raising, the donations that come through the door, are making it possible to have local clinical trials. Those dollars fund the very trials that are saving our kids' lives. So now we have tons of access to clinical trials that my child didn't have for the first 11 years of his life.

It's amazing to see the drugs that are being approved and how they're starting to affect people. We are currently on a new drug that came out that has completely changed how Cameron's cystic fibrosis has affected him in the past year. He has been so healthy. I could guarantee that Cameron is going to get married now. I could guarantee that Cameron's probably going to have a family. There is a major difference.

Fast-forward to where we are now, and I think four or five drugs have come on the market that fix the underlying cellular defect, that are extending lives. And we've been told by Samuel's doctor that at this point, we can expect him to have a normal lifespan. And wow — talk about something that a mom just really needs to hear. We expect her to go to college and have a good career and get married and have kids and grandbabies. And so I hopefully foresee that happening with these new medications that have come out. People born with CF now have more hope than ever. My children are prime examples. Their bodies now function as if they don't have CF, just by taking this medication that has been funded throughout these years.

It means that my children can live a full life and not have to worry about their life