"It's not a memorial to her," said Rina's mother, Stacy, a speech therapist at United Cerebral Palsy. "She wouldn't want it for the sake of herself."
She wanted it for others, crafting a tale of a mystical bracelet that links two girls - a metaphor for her relationship with her friends. One character has "mito," where cells generate less and less energy, eventually causing whole systems to fail. There's no cure.
Rina was frustrated that the disease got little attention although it affects one in 4,000 children. At the same time, she didn't want her movie to be a public-service announcement. It had to be a solid, entertaining film.
"She took her creativity, and her imagination, and let it go free," said her father, Ari, director of the Jewish Community High School at Gratz College.
Mitochondrial disease causes overwhelming fatigue, and from the time Rina was young, exhaustion was her companion. By 11, her heart struggled to stay in rhythm. A stroll through the mall became a marathon, and a cold could land her in the hospital.
Three years later, at a particularly difficult time, family friend Mitch Eiven, who runs a movie-production company near Princeton, asked Rina if she wanted to make a film.
She did. In fact, she seized on it. Rina would write out her concepts and e-mail them to Eiven, who turned her thoughts and direction into dialogue and narration, then returned the pages for revision.
"She became a filmmaker," said Eiven, head of the Movie and Theater Corp.
