North High School alumnus making feature film

A film student from Valley Stream is turning a short film project he helped produce last year into a feature-length film, and he’s hoping to attract some local support for it.

Daniel Luis Ennab, 20, is co-producing “And the Boys Go” with classmate Matt Hoff, 21, to fulfill their thesis film requirement at the School of Visual Arts, in Manhattan. Film majors must submit a short film that is at least 10 minutes long, but the pair decided to make a 90-minute piece that would incorporate a short they made last year, including a scene shot in the woods behind North High School.

For Ennab, the film is a reflection of his experience growing up in Valley Stream. “I think the town itself really made me realize that I wanted to do more with my life,” he said, adding that there wasn’t a “whole lot to do” in the village as a young person, but its scenery influenced his artistic vision and his teachers at North High School made him feel empowered to chase his dreams.

The former Drama Club member said that he and Hoff want to produce a film that accurately captures the feel of coming of age in a suburban neighborhood like Valley Stream. “Our goal is to capture the idiosyncrasies of small town-ness — knowing everyone, the isolation, the boredom, the calm,” Hoff said.

Ennab also wants to explore the perspective of young people who are about to graduate high school and make their way in the world, “our fears and our curiosities,” he said. “These are people who are kind of blossoming. These are people who are kind of naive, which is how I saw myself at the time.”

He said he thinks that movies about teenagers often miss the mark. “I don’t think they really get the language right a lot,” Ennab said. He added that he wants to focus on the “simple and subtle moments” that come to define friendships.

Ennab and Hoff have about $20,790 of the $30,000 goal they hope to reach in the next two weeks, and are accepting donations on the project’s website. Investors who contribute $2,500 or more will be credited as executive producers.

The finished product will be screened at their school’s annual film festival, and will then be shopped around to festivals across the country, according to Hoff. “Our end goal is to receive acceptance to Sundance [Film Festival] and then Netflix,” he said. “Limited theatrical distribution is evidently a stretch, but we'll be shipping the film around to various distributors in hopes it can be achieved."