Jessica Kennedy Vickers is stepping into the director’s chair with Endless Cycle, a short drama exploring love, marriage, and identity in the face of chronic illness. The trailer for the completed 28-minute film has officially been released, marking Vickers’ directorial debut and introducing a story centered on uterine fibroids — a condition that disproportionately affects Black women.
Written, directed, and produced by Vickers under her banner Wood and Rose Productions, with Christina Hill serving as producer, Endless Cycle is set in Mississippi and drawn from lived experience. The film is currently awaiting its world premiere.
A Story Rooted in Lived Experience
Endless Cycle follows Ryan (Conneka Urvette), a Black woman in her 30s confronting the return of uterine fibroids a decade after her first surgery. As she weighs difficult decisions about her body and future, her husband Leo (Don Daniels Jr.) stands beside her, while her mother and aunts — who share similar medical histories — offer perspective shaped by their own journeys.
The official logline reads: As her body betrays her, a woman’s identity and relationships hang in the balance when she faces a choice that could change everything.
The cast includes Conneka Urvette, Don Daniels Jr., Hattye C. Knight, Rose J. Franklin, ReJohnna Brown Mitchell, and Lois Hill.
Clarifying its scope, the film is not solely focused on the medical diagnosis. It examines how chronic illness reshapes marriage, family dynamics, and generational bonds, while also highlighting the physicians and loved ones who remain present through uncertainty and pain.
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Vickers described the intention behind the project in a statement:
“This film is rooted in my own experience, but it’s not a story about me. It’s about the women who carry invisible burdens and the people who love us through them. I made this film to break generational silences — to remind us that healing doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens in love, and in all the ways it shows up.”
Vickers serves as writer, director, and producer. Christina Hill produces, and the film is backed by Wood and Rose Productions.
Cultural Context and Industry Significance
Uterine fibroids impact Black women at significantly higher rates, yet stories centered on that reality have been largely absent from mainstream film narratives.
In that context, Endless Cycle contributes to a growing slate of independent projects that foreground culturally specific health experiences and generational dialogue. Rather than isolating illness as an individual struggle, the film situates it within family, marriage, and community — a framing that reflects broader shifts in how Black women’s stories are being told on screen.
Vickers’ broader body of work also centers identity and community. In addition to Endless Cycle, she serves as Producer and Assistant Director on Thibodeauxville, a documentary about the 1887 Thibodaux Massacre currently in post-production. A graduate of Jackson State University and Old Dominion University with degrees in engineering, she previously worked with Universal Creative and Royal Caribbean Group before expanding into filmmaking.
What’s Next
Endless Cycle is completed and awaiting its world premiere, with further release details expected to follow. With its trailer now public, the film enters the conversation around health equity, marriage, and generational healing — topics that continue to resonate both culturally and within the evolving independent film landscape.