Jill Orschel and Snowland

Snowland is a feature-length documentary by award winning director/producer Jill Orschel about Cora Lee Witt, a woman who created a fantasy realm to escape her dark past as a child bride in a secretive polygamous sect.

When she was 14 years old, Cora Lee was arranged into a plural marriage in the Short Creek polygamous group, now known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). Cora became a mother of 12 children and was often responsible for her sister-wife’s nine children. When Cora courageously spoke out about her husband’s abuse, she was shunned by her church and forced out of her home, but she grew to believe in herself and process her past by creating a fantasyland she called Snowland. Cora’s Snowland, developed over the 30 years after leaving her church, is made up of drawings, stories, characters, and costume designs that allowed her to reframe her past, process her trauma, and reclaim her identity as a woman, mother, and creative individual.