‘Elastic Hearts’ Filmmakers Claim Their Movie Was Denied a Texas Tax Incentive Over Abortion Storyline

Filmmaker Milad Avaz hoped his movie might ruffle some feathers and start a conversation, but he never expected it would create controversy as he was making it.

Avaz is a Danish-Iranian filmmaker based out of Copenhagen who last year shot his first English-language feature titled “Elastic Hearts.” The indie film stars Cole Sprouse, Darby Lee-Stack, Dean Norris, and Stephen Dorff, and after experiencing how many films are always fighting for competition in Los Angeles, he and his brother, producer Misam Avaz, decided to shoot somewhere else: Texas.

The location made narrative sense, too. The film follows a 19-year-old cello prodigy living in a rural part of Texas who turns to her gay, estranged older brother for help when she discovers she’s pregnant. That prompts the two of them to travel out of state to visit an abortion clinic. But “Elastic Hearts” is more concerned with grief and family coming together than abortion rights in Texas, where the procedure has been largely outlawed since 2022.

The Avaz brothers were not naive to that fact when they chose Texas as a shooting location and when they applied for a grant through the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program (TMIIIP), which can net…