《K-POP: Witch Hunters》Two Directors《Staying with Illusions》Producers

 Poet John Mathias and art curator Diana spent fifty years of marriage together.Parkinson's disease changed my wife's life, and the medications brought about vivid and sometimes beautiful hallucinations.John, who became a caregiver, began to learn to deal with the world as she saw it.This experience was turned into an animated documentary short film - Living With a Visionary - and now it has two more producers.

《K-POP: Witch Hunters 》 (KPop Demon Hunters) directors and Oscar winners Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans have joined the film as executive producers.The short, which will premiere this week at The New York Times Op-Docs, recently won the Animation Jury Prize at AFI Fest and the Sundance Shorts Jury Prize for Animation earlier this year.

The short film is adapted from Matthias's memoir of the same name, written, directed and animated by Stephen P. Neary, and narrated by James Cromwell.Neary serves as co-producer with Mireya Vilanova.

The paintings are composed of thousands of hand-drawn drawings, painted on layers of overlapping translucent tracing paper.Neary spent three years completing the paintings on nights and weekends while working full-time on storyboards and teaching classes at CalArts.

Kang knows how this little film came to be: Neely, while working full-time on K-POP: The Witches and taking care of her family, still found time to paint this heartbreaking story.She jokingly worried that he would get too little sleep, but also hoped that more viewers would have a chance to see the film.In her opinion, animation needs unique stories, and powerful works often appear in unexpected places.Appelhans talked about how lines carry love, sadness, illusion and the connection between people; Cromwell's narration allowed him to enter the character's state of mind, feel the pain of being alive, and feel the power of love's continued existence.

Neary thanked both men for their support.He is very clear that this small film, which has been drawn on paper for many years, is far from the style of K-POP: Witch Hunters; he still believes that both value undisguised emotions and can bring release to the audience through animation.

As a creator and showrunner, Neary has produced Cartoon Network, HBO Max’s The Fungies! and served as supervising producer on the Annie Award-nominated Clarence.His storyboarding credits also include K-POP: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Rio and Snoopy: The Peanuts Movie.

Op-Docs has added "Alien with Visions" to its 2026 awards season slate, along with eight other films, including Joshua Oppenheimer's "The Revolution Against Death", as well as "The Tuners" and "A Wolf in the Suburbs".A behind-the-scenes preview of the short animation production has also been released.