In recognition of the annual Easterseals Disability Film Challenge, I caught up with my friend and fellow advocate Anna Pakman to learn more about her latest contribution to this celebration of disabled talent in the media. Her newest five-minute masterpiece, Back to the Dark Ages, uses humor and heart to spotlight the often-overlooked struggles of those living with Long COVID and the isolation they endure in a society eager to “return to normal” despite the continued risk posed by this deadly virus.
The short film follows Christina (Makenzie Morgan Gomez), a former Broadway dancer and marathoner now thrust into an isolated and profoundly changed existence due to Long COVID, which leaves her fatigued, short of breath, and struggling with her mobility. When Christina accidentally summons a medieval ghost named Wilhelmina the Philanderer (Mary von Aue), she finds not only unexpected camaraderie, but also many eerie parallels between their respective experiences. Like Christina and millions of others affected by COVID, Wilhelmina has also lived through a “plague” and had her pleas for caution dismissed and ridiculed. The two women find solace in each other and lament that our society in 2026 has allowed history to repeat itself by failing to learn from the past.
Sadly, many of the pandemic-era warnings Wilhelmena issued to others centuries ago are the very same ones issued by Christina and fellow COVID Long-Haulers in modern-day New York City. Much like Wilhelmena’s doubting neighbors, those around Christina ignore her calls for a more health-conscious society, challenging the audience to consider how much progress has actually been made since the so-called “Dark Ages”.
In her latest work, writer, director and producer Pakman ultimately strives to challenge the narrative that the COVID-19 pandemic is “over” and uplift the voices of millions whose health and livelihoods have been forever altered by both the disease and by society’s apathy towards those coping with its reverberating consequences. The New York City-based filmmaker who lives with complications of a COVID infection herself, has an ever-stronger commitment to public health and hopes her new project will inspire the same in others.
Born with cerebral palsy, Pakman has always sought to highlight the disability experience on screen. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic and its role as a mass-disabling event have given her advocacy a new and powerful angle—a mission to prevent COVID-19 and build a more inclusive society for those newly disabled in the aftermath of infection. Much like her characters, Pakman is urging those who engage with her to take precautions to reduce their risk of preventable illness. A passionate voice for commonsense harm -reduction measures like masking and air filtration, she hopes that her audiences will see these approaches not as fossils from a bygone pandemic, but as necessary tools to thrive in a world forever changed by COVID.
Pakman deftly delivers a serious and urgent message while fully embracing the “dramedy” theme of this year’s challenge. She shares that it was a delight to “leverage her sense of humor” while also providing a platform for the Long COVID stories that are frequently excluded from the media, even within disability spaces. As in past years, COVID-consciousness is central to every aspect of Pakman’s set. In addition to physical precautions such as masking, advanced air filtration, and testing protocols, Pakman champions a culture of inclusion and encourages her team to speak up about their access needs.
The film boasts diverse talent in front of and behind the camera, including DP John Floresca of The Daily Show, who uses a wheelchair, and several chronically ill team members who “breathed authenticity” into Christina’s character. Pakman also cites the value of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ representation across the cast and crew and calls everyone who contributed “super skilled.”
When asked what comes next for disability representation in the media, she praises the increased number of disabled actors cast in disabled roles yet adds that there is much more work to do. Says Pakman, “We need more stories where disabled people exist as full, complex humans—funny, flawed, messy, ambitious—without their disability being the only thing that defines them.”
In an era that has opened dialogue about disability with hits such as HBO Max’s The Pitt and TLC’s Jay and Pamela, she hopes that the conversation continues, both in society at large and within the disability community itself. While non-disabled people have much to learn from disabled talent, we disabled folks have just as much to learn from each other.
Pakman calls on us all to resist viewing the disability experience as a “monolith,” beckoning us toward a future that “makes space for different ways of living, coping, and existing” even among those with the same diagnosis. Particularly, she hopes for strengthened bonds and increased cooperation between COVID conscious individuals and the larger disability community.
In the meantime, she will be hard at work pouring her talent into more projects that “shift how disability is seen and understood.” Perhaps if we commit to true inclusion and solidarity with the same zeal, the “the Dark Ages” will at last, be behind us.
Watch Anna’s film here: Back to the Dark Ages
