SoberFilm
A Next.js rebuild of The Phoenix's recovery film platform from Squarespace. Sanity CMS for full editorial control, Braze ESP integration for email audience management, and Google Sheets form routing — giving the communications team complete content control without a developer in the room.
Deliverables
Next.js rebuild
Sanity CMS
Braze ESP
Editorial platform
Tech stack
Year
2025
3
pages fully managed through Sanity CMS
0
developer involved content updates
1
ESP integration connecting to Braze
Full
form routing to Google Sheets on day one
The challenge
SoberFilm is The Phoenix's platform for recovery-focused cinema — film as a pathway to conversation about addiction, healing, and storytelling that reaches people traditional recovery messaging does not. The site had been running on Squarespace. It worked in the way Squarespace sites work: adequately, within the template's constraints, and with no real ability to grow beyond them. The Phoenix's communications team needed to publish and manage content without a developer present for every update. They needed their email audience manageable through their existing Braze instance rather than adding a new tool. And they needed form submissions — screening requests, partnership inquiries, volunteer interest — to route somewhere the team could actually work from.
The rebuild
The rebuild replaced Squarespace with a Next.js site running Sanity CMS as the content layer. Every editorial decision The Phoenix's team needs to make — film listings, screening schedules, editorial content, featured stories — is manageable through the Sanity studio without any developer involvement. The CMS structure was designed around how the team actually works, not around what a generic content type system offers. Static generation for editorial content, image optimization through Vercel's image pipeline, and a minimal JavaScript footprint combine to produce load times appropriate for a site whose audience includes people in recovery who may be on older devices or slower connections. The site being fast is a design decision about who it is for.
Email and forms
The Braze integration connects SoberFilm's email capture directly to The Phoenix's existing Braze instance. New subscribers from SoberFilm enter the audience segments the communications team already manages — no separate list in a separate tool that needs to be reconciled later. Form submissions from the site route to Google Sheets through a structured webhook. The SoberFilm operations team works from Sheets for their coordination processes. The forms were built to put data where the team can actually use it rather than into a system that requires a separate workflow to extract it.
The communications team manages the entire site. A developer is not in the room for any of it.
