Film Birmingham spotlights no-budget feature Moon Beams, set in Birmingham

Moon Beams is the kind of Birmingham movie that tells you how Alabama indies really get made: with no budget, a long shoot, and a filmmaker willing to turn local streets into the engine of the story. Film Birmingham is spotlighting the feature as part of its push to showcase productions made in the city, and this one was filmed throughout November 2021 through January 2023 in and around downtown Birmingham and in Jacksonville.

Written and directed by Nick Adrian, Moon Beams follows Harry, a small-town drug dealer on the run after killing an undercover cop, who reconnects with his former flame and partner in crime, Maxine, after three years apart. Their night in Birmingham gives the film its pull: less spectacle, more tension, memory, and chemistry. That is exactly the kind of setup that rewards a real place over a backlot, and Birmingham is not just scenery here. It is the pressure cooker.

Adrian’s route into filmmaking explains a lot about the project’s DIY spine. FilmFreeway describes the Birmingham native as someone who started making films as a freshman in college with an iPhone for a camera and an iPad for editing. Coffee Whale Films calls Moon Beams its debut no-budget feature, and the trailer backs up the handmade feel with credits that name Seth Henry as producer and Blake Walch as director of photography. The cast includes Katelyn Simmons, Paris Thom Cruze, Tori Smith, Azya Elrod, Taylor Adams, Bailey Brown, Madi Farrow, Dylan Gaskey and Adrian.

Film Birmingham, an initiative of Create Birmingham and the film office for the Greater Birmingham region, says its mission is to create job opportunities, generate revenues, elevate regional visibility and advocate economic development. Moon Beams fits that mission cleanly. It shows a local production built from local collaborators, local locations and a distinctly Alabama point of view, the kind of film that helps prove the city can generate its own stories instead of waiting for an outside crew to define them.

The film has also started to move beyond the local spotlight. A March 2026 Film Threat review called Moon Beams an indie narco-noir and said it was now on YouTube. For Birmingham filmmakers, that matters: a no-budget feature shot over more than a year in Birmingham and Jacksonville can still travel, still find viewers, and still carry the city’s name with it.