Tiny Hearts
Hope in the heart of chaos
A pediatric heart team travels into war zones and fragile hospitals to operate on children born with congenital heart defects, for whom surgery can’t wait.
Featured work
Select a title to feature itCHRIS DELA CRUZ · STORY ARCHITECT
The format changes. The architecture doesn't.
Writer, director and producer. Every project starts with the structure of the story, then takes the form that serves it best: feature, series, short, vertical or documentary. Written, shot and cut under one roof at Float Entertainment.
PLACES I'VE FILMED
DEPARTURES
The slate
On location
Most cameras never get in hereWORK WITH FLOAT
Built from story. Written, directed, produced.
Story & development
Concepts, scripts and series architecture, and the packaging that gets a project in front of buyers.
Directing
Narrative, documentary and vertical series, with set authority on a soundstage or in a hard-access location.
Producing
Features, series and branded work, taken from first conversation through cameras up to delivery.
Post & finishing
Edit and story, in-house, so the decisions made on the page and on set survive into the final cut.
WRITER · DIRECTOR · PRODUCER · WGA WEST
Chris Dela Cruz
Chris is a story architect: a writer, director and producer who builds the structure of a story first, then chooses the form that carries it. Through Float Entertainment, his Los Angeles production company, he develops and makes features, series, shorts and vertical work.
His first feature screenplay, LAYOVER, is complete. His feature TINY HEARTS was an Official Selection at SF DocFest 2026, and its companion book, LIKE-HEARTED: A FILMMAKER'S PATH, is out now. He has filmed across Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Raised in Daly City, based in LA.
ALSO WRITING
THE BOOK
Like-Hearted
A FILMMAKER'S PATH
The companion book to TINY HEARTS: following Dr. Bill Novick's team from Lebanon to Ukraine to the heart of Africa, and what it took to film it.
Available on Amazon →
DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
I build stories the way an architect builds a house. Structure first, then the rooms, then the light. I've carried cameras into operating rooms in Libya and across the border into Ukraine, and every one of those rooms taught me the same thing: a true story has a load-bearing beam. Find it, and the form follows, whether that's a feature, a series or sixty seconds on a phone. The question never changes: what does the person watching walk away with?
