"The Future of Man" Short Film Project from Feazible Productions on Vimeo.
An anti-medicine cult controls every aspect of Josie's life. When she's forced to break one of its core tenets in order to save her young son, she risks public humiliation and permanent isolation from her family.
From the web site: The Future of Man
I was raised in the Worldwide Church of God, a Pasadena, California-based religious cult, founded by the evangelist Herbert W. Armstrong, that prohibited its members from using modern medicine.
When I contracted a near-fatal pneumonia infection at the age of six, my father, a high-ranking minister, and my mother made a bold choice to defy the church's strict rules and take me to a hospital, where I was given antibiotics and saved.
It can be hard for someone who has never been in a brainwashing cult to understand why someone in the situation like the one my parents were in can't just pack up and leave.
Organizations like the WCG, while venerating the family unit publicly, actually weaponize familial relationships by teaching (and forcing) members to ostracize relatives who leave or are disfellowshipped. My parents' familial, social, spiritual, and professional lives were all inexorably tied to the church.
When I was sallow, colorless, and becoming weaker by hour, they must have certainly struggled with a brutal internal conflict. On one hand, there was clearly something seriously wrong with me and their parental insticts would compel them to use any means necessary to fix it. On the other, taking me to the hospital could very likely cause not only terrible devastation to all of our personal lives, but a permanent "F" on a test from God.
My goal for this short is to capture and dramatize that conflict.