On an unassuming corner in Fort Pierce, Florida, it’s easy to miss the insidious war that’s raging. But on each side of 12th and Delaware, soldiers stand locked in a passionate battle. On one side of the street sits an abortion clinic. On the other, a pro-life outfit often mistaken for the clinic it seeks to shut down.
Using skillful cinema-vérité observation that allows us to draw our own conclusions, Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, the directors of Jesus Camp, expose the molten core of America’s most intractable conflict. As the pro-life volunteers paint a terrifying portrait of abortion to their clients, across the street, the staff members at the clinic fear for their doctors’ lives and fiercely protect the right of their clients to choose. Shot in the year when abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was murdered in his church, the film makes these fears palpable. Meanwhile, women in need become pawns in a vicious ideological war with no end in sight.. —Sundance Film Festival
The co-director of the Emmy-nominated documentary The Boys of Baraka, which also won the 2006 NAACP award for Outstanding Independent Film, Rachel is a private investigator turned filmmaker. Rachel has produced and directed numerous non-fiction films for MTV, CBS, The Discovery Channel, A & E and Britain’s Channel 4. She has directed several films that focus on mental illness including Mad Justice, a verité documentary that looks at the troubling fate of mentally ill parolees and Ward 2 West, shot on location at the Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Hospital in New York City. Rachel was the Series Producer for TX, an eight-part series for VH1 filmed entirely on location at drug rehab. She recently completed her second documentary feature, Jesus Camp, which was nominated for an Academy Award and aired on television worldwide. In 2007 Time Magazine included Rachel as one of five innovators in documentary film. Rachel is the co-founder of Loki Films. She and Ewing are currently working with… read more
As the co-owner of the New York-based production company, Loki Films, Heidi has taken on a wide range of subjects that includes the inner workings of Scientology, ritualistic body modification in Sri Lanka and the labyrinth that is the criminal justice system in the Bronx. Previously, she delved in the dramatic world of Cuban politics with Dissident, a film about the struggle of Havana-based Nobel Peace Prize nominee Oswaldo Paya – a film that was made clandestinely and has been shown around the world. She and her directing partner Rachel Grady, recently co-directed The Boys of Baraka, the critically acclaimed documentary feature that was released by ThinkFilm in 2005. Her latest feature documentary, Jesus Camp, also co-directed with Grady, chronicles the Evangelical movement through the eyes of children. The film, a collaboration with A&E IndieFilms, made its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2006 and was released theatrically by Magnolia Pictures before being nominated… read more
The abortion war being waged in miniature on one street. An enraging, vital documentary.
"Now in its 17th year, the Hot Docs film festival has gone from a low-key industry conference to an internationally renowned event with
