In Development

The U.S. is the most religiously diverse nation on earth. The community of Detroit is rich with stories of everyday people grappling with the reality of pluralism, especially religious pluralism. Filmmaker Maria Finitzo will capture how individuals confront the appearance of a stranger, and ultimately come to accept the stranger as one who will not only stay, but belongs as well.

Anak Selatae (Son of the South) follows the journey into manhood of several young Malay-Muslims from the troubled province of Pattani in southern Thailand. Every year, the young men, who work as low-wage migrants in neighboring Malaysia, return home to their village. This time they are being called back for the annual military draft. The draft holds a bitter irony: they are being asked to sacrifice their lives for a country that has failed to include them as Muslims and ethnic Malays in its vision of a monolithic Buddhist Thai culture.

Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religious movement in the world, with nine million new members a year. Pentecostal churches in South Korea, Brazil and South Africa share a common trait: they can trace their roots back to a two-story, white-washed building at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles where, in the early 1900's, an unlikely congregation of blacks, Hispanics, whites and Asians gave birth to a religious revival that would sweep the globe.

The Calling is a groundbreaking four-part documentary series that will share the journeys of six young Americans - a Catholic, a Muslim, an Evangelical Christian, a Jew, a Buddhist and a Presbyterian - who have decided to enter the clergy. Danny Alpert and a renowned team of documentary filmmakers will follow these clerics-in-training as they take their first uncertain steps across the thresholds of their academies, undergo years of study and training, and face new challenges and personal growth as ordained religious professionals. Their trials and triumphs will provide viewers with an exclusive, "behind-the-scenes" glimpse into the dynamics of pursuing a religious vocation.

In the Polish town of Dzialoszyce, Catholics and Jews are fighting against the odds to make peace after centuries of anti-Semitism that during World War II nearly eliminated the Jewish population there. In Common Ground, award-winning filmmakers Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky (Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance after the Holocaust and A Life Apart: Hasidism in America) will document this heroic effort, an example for communities around the globe attempting to live in harmony across the lines of religious difference.

Is Jonah the last Jewish baby?  Can a minority ethnic/religious community survive declining birth rates, intermarriage, feminism, individualism and secularism?  In the Jewish community, it’s called “the continuity crisis,” and it is a cause of real anguish and a focus of massive philanthropic projects aimed at jump-starting identity and baby-making among young Jews.

The Church of Gethsemane is a special Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) located in Brooklyn, NY. It is run by and for prisoners, ex-prisoners, their families, and individuals in partnership with the poor and imprisoned. Gethsemane's story is one of mutual transformation, both of ex-prisoners and of individuals from mainstream churches who have risked personal involvement with them. The Gethsemane Film Project will explore how a community like Gethsemane manifests not only the mission of the Presbyterian denomination, but also the principles at the heart of all faiths that value equality and justice.

“God does not forbid music,” a character states in Heavy Metal Islam.  But, of course, many governments do forbid heavy metal.  This documentary takes a look at the surprising story of how a music invented for disaffected youths in the West has taken hold in the Middle East.  Heavy Metal Islam is not a concert film, but it will use music to help tell stories of young people in the Muslim world who do not fit stereotypes (suicide bomber/burka-clad woman) and who share many of the same hopes and dreams as kids in the West.  The filmmakers wish to shatter the common belief that angry young Muslims have only one outlet – violence – and show viewers that grace can appear “in the strangest of places.”

When you’ve grown up all over the world, can you ever really go home again? Home Again takes an intimate look at the struggles of evangelical Missionary Kids, whose childhoods have taken them around the globe.  Director Julie Englander follows them as they navigate their identity as Americans, as believers, and as adults. Their passports say that they are citizens of the United States, but at times the U.S. can seem like the strangest country of all.

Howard Thurman will bring to life the story of a remarkable individual. Howard Thurman established the nation's first interracial, intercultural and interfaith congregation and advocated tirelessly for community among disparate races and faiths. He collaborated with religious leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, and played an inspirational and pivotal role in the Civil Rights Movement.

Learning To Swim chronicles the life of Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, one of the last Tibetan lamas to be trained in Tibet, as his life intersects over two decades with a Jewish woman from Philadelphia drawn to his teachings. The girl is Jennifer Fox, an award-winning filmmaker, whose camera captures the journey of Norbu Rinpoche through a rapidly changing geographical and spiritual landscape.

Monks and Muslims: Finding Faith in Algeria will focus on a community of French Trappist monks for whom faith and good works mattered more than theology and ritual. Surrounded by war and terror that consumed Algeria in the 1990s, the monks showed inspiring spirit and courage, fighting for the lives of beleaguered Muslims as they put their own lives at risk.

Award-winning filmmaker Dr. Norris Chumley and priest/historian Dr. John McGuckin trace the footsteps of the ancient monks, hermits and sages of the first to twelfth centuries who lived in caves and the first monasteries established in Egypt, Israel, Syria, Greece, Romania and Russia.

Nobody Should Know tells the stories of three courageous Orthodox Jews, forced by the customs of their community to keep their life-threatening illness, the genetic disease cystic fibrosis, a secret not only from the community but also from many of their loved ones.

Filmmaker Geeta Patel turns her camera in this comedic documentary on arranged marriages in the Hindu community in the U.S.A. She follows her brother Ravi, who wrestles with his American upbringing and his dawning desire to seek an arranged marriage, as his parents send him around the country to meet potential Hindu wives.

Swami Dayananda Saraswati captivates seekers from India to Pennsylvania to Oman.  A traditional eighty-year old monk dressed in saffron robes, Dayananda deftly weaves sophisticated philosophical concepts and methods for discovering emotional maturity with storytelling, humor, and insights into pop culture. One Without a Second is set in a remote forest ashram in Tamil Nadu, India.  An international community of students gathers there to listen to Dayananda as he unfolds the teachings of Advaita Vedanta, the Indian philosophical tradition of non-duality.The tradition is in the midst of radical changes as it encounters modernity and changing social structures in India.  Filmmakers Jillian Elizabeth and Neil Dalal follow the next generation of students as they navigate the austere intensity of monastic life and discover the core wisdom of Vedanta that transcends its cultural and religious forms.

This documentary investigates the growth of a the Patriot Riders movement as the viewer travels with these motorcyclists on a solemn journey to funerals of young soldiers killed in action. Patriot Riders was originally formed to protect grieving families from members of the Westboro Baptist Church, who gather at military funerals to harass families for allowing their sons and daughters to serve. The film reveals an unlikely but powerful spiritual bond between the riders and the grieving families.

Prayer follows award-winning filmmaker Jonathan Skurnik on his quest to understand the power of prayer and its dynamic role in social change. Skurnik plans to roam the country seeking the secrets behind how spiritual leaders have used prayer to affect change in the world around us.

Today there are but 15,000 Jews living in Poland, down from more than four million in 1939. After World War II, Poland’s few remaining Jews hid their identity from children and grandchildren. With the fall of Communism in 1989, a young generation of Jews in Poland began learning of their long-buried ancestry. Regeneration tells their story by following four women in their 20’s who discovered they were Jewish in their teens, and are now strong, dynamic leaders in their nascent Jewish enclaves.

This two-hour documentary focuses on how the medical profession is not only looking to the origins of medicine in order to move forward, by re-integrating religiously based tenets into the healing process, but also responding to contemporary research findings that support earlier accepted wisdom.

The feature rockumentary Rock n' Roll Rabbis takes viewers on a musical journey into the little-known world of Orthodox rock, profiling religious Jews who reconcile the asceticism of Orthodox Judaism with a rock n' roll lifestyle. This intimate portrait focuses on four of the most prominent rock n' roll acts, as the camera follows these religious individuals backstage, into the studio, and finally on Yidstock, an international tour.

Streetcar to Calcutta follows writer Fatima Shaik, who is Christian and African American, on a cinematic journey from New Orleans, the city of her birth, to Calcutta, the birthplace of the Muslim grandfather she never knew.  Her Christian African American family has lived in Louisiana for four generations.  Her Muslim Bengali grandfather left India and settled in New Orleans in 1893 and married Tennie Ford, an African American Catholic. Traveling from New Orleans to Calcutta across geographical, spiritual and cultural borders, Fatima Shaik will become acquainted with Islam in daily life and investigate what Muslims in India associate with Christianity.  It is a story of Christianity and Islam, America and India, New Orleans and Calcutta.

Many films have addressed Jewish-Christian relationships during the World War II era from the Jewish perspective.  Director Erin Reese tells the story of The Jewess from the perspective of a Christian German American.  It’s about a Jew saving Germans, not Germans saving Jews.

Ten years ago, filmmakers Tricia Regan and Jenifer McShane documented a grassroots movement of parents and teachers in Northern Ireland bent on integrating Catholic and Protestant school children. Their film was nominated for an Academy Award and was seen around the world. In Time for Peace, Regan and McShane will return to Northern Ireland to evaluate the success of this movement, locating the families who sent their children across battle lines a decade ago to forge a community of peace and now face the challenges as adults of violence and conflict that won't go away.

The Episcopal Church is wrestling with a "divisive issue of inclusion," which arose following a 2003 vote to install the Rev. Gene Robinson, a gay clergyman living in a committed relationship, as Bishop of New Hampshire. Award-winning filmmakers Cal Skaggs and Tom Hurwitz plan to explore in Torn Asunder the nature, causes and effects of a potential split over this issue of homosexuality in mainline Protestantism by profiling how the issue is being addressed in the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, the largest in membership and one of the two oldest in the nation, and the diocese in which protests against homosexuality have been most vocal, most active, and most effective.

Every now and then, history rests the fate of millions on the shoulders of one. One such person has chosen to walk into an international firestorm, as he takes a stand for his civil liberties, his livelihood, his faith, his love. With exclusive access, The Truth Will Set You Free tells the story of Gene Robinson, Bishop of New Hampshire, and the first openly gay Bishop in Christendom.

Valentino's Ghost takes viewers on a chronological journey through more than a century of images of Muslims, Arabs and Islam in the U.S. media, from the early-20th-century fantasies of romantic sheiks and golden palaces to today's portrayals of fanatics.

A muezzin calls Islamic worshippers to prayer from the minaret of a mosque five times a day, in a 1,400-year-old tradition called the adhan. In Cairo, a city of 4,000 mosques, that tradition is about to disappear. The Egyptian government approved a proposal to systematize the call to prayer. Under this plan, set to go into effect in 2010, the adhan will be reduced to a single recording of one muezzin reciting the adhan, which will then be broadcast throughout the city using wireless receivers. The filmmakers plan to document and honor the tradition of the adhan before it ceases to exist.

William Sloane Coffin: A Life will examine in-depth the life and legacy of the brilliant, ebullient and now legendary former chaplain of Yale University and senior minister of Riverside Church in New York. Gibney will paint a portrait of the man and the minister, and "track his progress from 'great man' - leader, orator, advocate for change and justice - to 'wonderful man' -who later in life became full of wonder about the world around him."