Watch the First-Look Teaser then scroll down to learn how you can honor a loved one and step into the story itself!
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For decades, we’ve been told there is no hope for Alzheimer’s. That the best we can do is watch our loved ones fade, medicated into silence. But what if that story is wrong?
The Golden Teacher captures a miracle in motion: on-camera evidence of psilocybin mushrooms transforming not just mood, but cognition and independence in an Alzheimer’s patient within a single day. No pharmaceutical has ever come close.
We are on the edge of the largest wave of dementia diagnoses in history as Boomers age into the danger zone. So we are sounding the alarm—and lighting the way.
To do that, we’re looking for help. Your support enables us to launch the first round of production, reach policymakers, and give struggling families a real reason to hope.
The Golden Teacher is a groundbreaking hybrid docudrama capturing the first known filmed case study of psychedelic therapy used to treat Alzheimer’s Disease.
Actor Justice Leak, whose 20-year career included roles alongside Oscar winners like Denzel Washington and Colin Firth, pointed the camera home when his mother—Dardee, a beloved third-grade teacher—was diagnosed with a rare and terrifying form of dementia. With no help from the white coats, and her mind fading fast, he turned to psilocybin and...it worked.
Blending personal narrative with national critique, The Golden Teacher explores the collapse of trust in medicine, the tension between Christianity and psychedelics, the emotional toll of caregiving, and the fragile grace of hope in the midst of a global pandemic.
Using state-of-the-art visualizations and scripted vignettes reimagined with a multi-ethnic cast, the film places the audience inside a mind reckoning with memory, identity, and perception—where even Justice reenacts moments blending reality.
Armed only with an iPhone, Justice gives us a front row seat to the rapturous breakthroughs, the heartbreaking downturn and one last miracle we get to witness. In doing so, the film redefines what a documentary can be: not just a record of events, but a psalm of how we remember, what we mythologize, and how truth shifts depending on who's doing the telling.
It’s a rebellion. A love letter. A myth.
And like Justice, we become her final student.
🎁 Help spread the news and…
BECOME part of The Story!
Every donation helps spread news of hope for the millions of families devastated by Alzheimer's Disease by bringing The Golden Teacher to life—and in return, we bring you closer our story and offer opportunities to share yours.
From heartfelt keepsakes to walk-on roles, each tier invites you deeper into the myth, the mission, and the miracle.
✨ $10+ — The Seed
A seed of hope. A spark of change.
- 🌱 Digital copy of Brain on Fire | An Antidote for Alzheimer’s
A 33-page firsthand account written and researched by filmmaker Justice Leak. It documents the powerful results of psychedelic treatment with his mother and two other Alzheimer’s patients—supported by 21 peer-reviewed studies. - 🌼 Digital thank-you card
- 📬 Early access to exclusive campaign updates
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🌿 $50+ — The Sprout
Honor the journey. Celebrate a loved one.
- All of The Seed
- 🧸 Folder of adorable GIFs featuring Dardee, to brighten your day or someone else’s
- 💖 Social media tribute from our campaign Instagram/Facebook
(Choose: Your name, or send us an image / video honoring a loved one who battled Alzheimer’s)
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🌸 $100+ — The Bloom
Wear the message. Grow the mission.
- All of The Sprout
- 🎁 Custom friendship bracelet
Choose from phrases like “Hope Grows,” “Nature Heals,” or “For [LOVED ONE’S NAME]”
Includes an adorable mushroom charm - 🎬 “Special Thanks” film credit (you or a loved one)
- 📺 Access to our private Instagram subscriber feed for unreleased footage and behind-the-scenes reflections
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🍄 $250+ — The Garden
Step deeper into the magic and perhaps...into the film!
- All of The Bloom
- 🎤 Invite to an exclusive live Q&A with filmmaker and advocate Justice Leak
- 🎭 Automatic entry into our walk-on role lottery!
You could be featured in a scene from Dardee’s psychedelic visions or a narrative flashback
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🌀 $1,000+ — The Producer
From supporter… to advocate.
- All of The Garden
- 🎬 Associate Producer credit (film + IMDb)
- 💌 Personalized thank-you video from Justice
- 🎟️ VIP Premiere Invite for you + a guest!
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🕊️ $5,000+ — The Storyteller
Immortalize your legacy. Step into the story!
- All of The Producer
- 🎭 Become PART OF OUR STORY | Appear in the film:
- Either via a walk-on role
- Or you or a loved one's name or photo used in one of our narrative vignettes to be filmed on our cutting-edge Virtual Production Stage.
- 💃 Walk the red carpet with the cast & crew (you + 1)
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🔥 $10,000+ — The Golden Producer
Legacy-level support for a legacy-making story.
- All of The Storyteller
- ✨ Executive Producer credit (film opening + IMDb)
- 🍽️ Private dinner with Justice and the core creative team
- 🎁 Custom engraved keepsake
- 🎉 Invites to all premieres, wrap events, and behind-the-scenes gatherings
🌠 Want to Fast Track the Film? — Let’s Talk
We’re welcoming visionary backers and strategic collaborators to help this message of hope spread like mycelium. Whether as a lead funder, partner org, or impact producer, we’re open to building something meaningful together.
📬 Email: GoldenTeacherFilm@gmail.com
You won’t just be backing a film. You’ll be part of a cultural turning point.
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Memory as Myth: Innovative Storytelling
Justice’s skills as an actor and storyteller serve as the film’s structural foundation, blending vérité footage with dramatically reconstructed vignettes shot using advanced virtual production techniques and evocative reenactments.
Unlike traditional documentaries, The Golden Teacher deliberately exposes the subjective nature of memory, creating scenes multiple times from various family members' perspectives. Through lighting, performance, and subtle shifts in dialogue and atmosphere, the film illustrates how each person’s truth varies—and how understanding those truths can heal deeply entrenched familial divides.
This technique positions The Golden Teacher among a rising wave of prestigious hybrid documentaries, such as Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell, Netflix’s docuseries Wormwood, and HBO’s The Vow. Yet, it uniquely elevates the form by using these dramatic interpretations not as mere illustrative reenactments, but as emotionally charged, empathic meditations on perception, trauma, and forgiveness.
An American Myth Revisited
Embedded in this intimate narrative is a wider commentary on modern Americana—the fading promises of the American Dream, the opioid and pharmaceutical crises, and the misunderstood legacy of psychedelic substances. Justice’s very name—alongside his sister Liberty—reflects their father’s deep patriotism and its costly consequences, from the trauma of his Vietnam service to his subsequent struggles with alcoholism. Justice’s discovery that the U.S. government had known since the 1950s that LSD could effectively treat alcoholism ignites a personal and political fury, adding a poignant urgency to the film.
The family’s conservative Christian Southern values collide with Justice’s progressive approach to healing. Psychedelic therapy challenges the family's rigid worldviews, alienating Justice and his mother from their closest relatives. Yet, this alienation isn’t the end—it’s the catalyst for redemption. The film compassionately explores the misunderstandings and judgments that arise within families confronting unconventional therapies, ultimately highlighting a universal path toward reconciliation and deeper connection.
Faith, Psychedelics, and the American Family
Crucially, The Golden Teacher never mocks or diminishes the family’s Christian faith. Instead, the film embraces spirituality as a fundamental dimension of healing. Justice’s mother, a devout Christian, found her faith not undermined but profoundly deepened by her psychedelic experiences. This spiritual dimension provides a bridge, connecting the psychedelic renaissance to mainstream American families wrestling with their own crises of faith, addiction, and healthcare failures.
Personal Transformation: Lessons from The Golden Teacher
Justice’s journey isn’t simply about saving his mother; it’s about becoming fully present himself—learning, through painful trial and profound insight, the power of now. As memory slips away from his mother, the very concept of memory becomes sacred to him, crystallized in reflections like:
"When you no longer have the ability to remember the past or imagine a future, all you're left with.. just so happens to be.. the very best part—
the part that's right in front of you."
These poetic, deeply reflective "lessons" punctuate the film, functioning as emotional anchors and moments of clarity, similar in style to Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life or the introspective narratives in Dick Johnson is Dead.
Narrative Innovation: A Multiverse of Mothers and Sons
Told through a layered, nonlinear structure, the film moves between:
- Vérité footage from 2019 to 2023, capturing Doris's progression, their treatments, and poignant interviews before, during, and after shot on an iPhone.
- Narrative vignettes, using different actors—across race, gender, and age—to portray Justice and Dardee in pivotal scenes. This casting reflects the story’s universality, exploring how these experiences transcend any single identity.
- Virtual production and AI animation, visualizing what Dardee may have experienced during her treatments: vivid hallucinations, looping fears, childlike wonder, and her poetic visions—like the “three Justices” she often described. These aren’t abstract hallucinations—they’re emotionally real, rendered with intention, reverence, and imagination.
Dardee referred to her sessions as “dreams.” These scenes will visualize the surreal, sacred nature of the psychedelic experience while mirroring the disorientation of Alzheimer’s itself. Even Justice reenacts moments acknowledging:
“This isn’t how things happened. Not exactly. It’s how these moments live in my mind..and how I imagine they might’ve lived in hers.”
In doing so, the film redefines what a documentary can be: not just a record of events, but a reflection of how we remember, what we mythologize, and how truth shifts depending on who is doing the telling.
Major Themes & Topics Explored
- Myth and Meaning – How story becomes survival.
- Memory and Identity – What happens when memory dissolves? What remains of a person—and a relationship—when history disappears?
- Grief and Transformation – How can loss also be a rite of passage?
- Faith and Psychedelics – Doris’s Christianity deepened, not diminished, through plant medicine. The film invites spiritual audiences into that conversation.
- Caregiving and Family Tensions – Especially how women, queer folks, and people of color often bear this unseen burden.
- The Unexpected Gift – Justice explores how his sexuality, once a source of shame, allowed him the freedom to move back home (without a family of his own) and revealed a unique superpower in caregiving.
- Systemic Failure in American Healthcare – The hospital that offered nothing. The neurologist who said, “That’s not what we’re studying here.” The nursing home that wasn’t an option.
- Americana and Broken Promises – From Vietnam to lockdowns, from AA to prescription drugs, the story traces one family's faith in America—and how it must evolve.
Mythic and Symbolic Layers
- Multiverse Framing – Not just a narrative trick, but a metaphor for how memory fractures and rebuilds. Different actors portray Justice and Doris at key moments to explore the emotional truth from various angles.
- The Garden as Sanctuary – During the COVID lockdowns, the garden became their only escape—a place of play, prayer, and psychedelic ritual.
- Zion National Park – A culminating pilgrimage. Filmed in majestic detail, this final trip serves as a metaphor for Heaven, closure, and the vast beauty of transition.
- Miss Autumn – A recurring symbolic identity for Doris, tied to the seasons, to memory falling away, and to the gentleness of letting go.
Cinematic and Creative Legacy
- The First Film to capture a real-life, multiyear experiment using psychedelics to treat Alzheimer’s.
- A Rare Cultural Bridge, connecting Christian families, psychedelic reformers, grief caregivers, and spiritual seekers.
- A Bold Hybrid Form, blending documentary, virtual production, dream logic, and poetic voiceover.
- A Showcase of Justice’s Craft, leveraging twenty years of screen experience to bring emotional realism and magnetic storytelling to an unforgettable narrative.
Cinematic and Tonal Comparables:
Directors:
- Derek Cianfrance (The Place Beyond the Pines, Blue Valentine)
- Emotionally raw, intimate family dynamics captured in visually immersive storytelling.
- Jean-Marc Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club, Wild)
- Strong in balancing personal trauma with broader social issues. Sensitive exploration of taboo health subjects through engaging, character-driven narratives.
- Chloé Zhao (The Rider, Nomadland)
- Authentic, gentle, yet visually poetic exploration of deeply personal and emotional journeys, frequently set against vivid natural backdrops.
- Barry Jenkins (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk)
- Graceful, emotionally resonant storytelling with an artistic yet grounded visual style, capturing intimate emotional relationships and societal tensions.
Film and TV Comparables:
- Still Alice (2014, dir. Wash Westmoreland):
- Direct examination of Alzheimer’s through intimate family drama, emotional realism, and powerful performances.
- Beautiful Boy (2018, dir. Felix Van Groeningen):
- Exploration of family and addiction with strong emotional depth, emphasizing compassionate yet unflinching family dynamics.
- The Father (2020, dir. Florian Zeller):
- Powerful narrative on memory, perception, and dementia, innovatively structured to immerse viewers in the subjective experience of the disease.
- How to Change Your Mind (2022, Netflix Documentary series based on Michael Pollan’s book):
- Demonstrates openness to psychedelic treatment, potential shifts in public perception, and thoughtful, empathetic exploration of complex medical topics.
Historic Impact and Cultural Significance
As the first documented case of Alzheimer’s treatment with psychedelics, The Golden Teacher holds unique historical and scientific significance. With Alzheimer's diagnoses set to skyrocket among Baby Boomers, and psychedelic medicines poised for mainstream acceptance, this documentary is timely, groundbreaking, and profoundly necessary. It confronts outdated drug laws, challenges stigmas around mental health, and offers practical hope to millions of suffering families.
Justice leverages two decades of experience in film and television—working alongside Oscar-winning talents like Denzel Washington, Colin Firth, and Barry Jenkins—to guide The Golden Teacher into the cultural conversation, ensuring its message resonates deeply across generations, demographics, and political divides.
Meaning behind 'The Golden Teacher'
The title holds triple meaning:
- Dardee, the literal teacher, whose dementia became a final curriculum for her son.
- The mushroom, the psilocybin strain used in her treatment—delivering mystical insight and, at times, miraculous clarity.
- The experience itself, which taught Justice how to stay present, how to forgive, and how to love in a new language.
Why Now?
In a moment when America is rethinking healthcare, mental wellness, and family care, The Golden Teacher delivers a powerful testimony of what’s possible beyond traditional medicine. It is an urgent narrative about family, about the hidden potential of psychedelics, about healing historical wounds, and about a nation rediscovering its moral compass.
Above all, it asks viewers to consider a simple yet revolutionary idea:
"What would you do if it were your mom?"
Spread the glad tidings!
#HopeGrows #GoldenTeacherFilm
