The other night, at the end of our planning meeting for the upcoming 8th annual LDS Film Festival, Christian Vuissa and Brandon Smith treated me to a sneak peak of their newest feature endeavor, Father in Israel: a Tribute to Fatherhood.

The other night, at the end of our planning meeting for the upcoming 8th annual LDS Film Festival, Christian Vuissa and Brandon Smith treated me to a sneak peak of their newest feature endeavor, Father in Israel: a Tribute to Fatherhood.

At the end of the night, I found myself grateful to be working closely with Christian and Brandon. I admire what strides Christian has taken, both in his work as a filmmaker and as an organizer for the LDS Film Festival, even if I don’t agree with all the details of how things are done. For Christian, Father in Israel is a notable departure from his other feature length endeavors, this one being the first film that he has written, produced, and directed. He’s taken a little more of a risk with this one as well, investing some of his own resources into the production of this film.

In saying that I would be interested to see how the story develops, Christian simply quipped, “Story? What story?” suggesting that this latest film is more of a day-in-the-life-of type approach, veering strongly away from mainstream, plot-driven entertainment. However, after watching the opening sequence and two other excerpts from the film, there was already some compelling character development and family dynamics at play that have not been seen in his other films. There’s something slightly more genuine about these characters that causes me to care about them, at least from what I’ve seen so far. 

As mentioned, Christian is exclusively responsible for the writing of Father in Israel. With his other two feature projects, he was working within the limitations of someone else’s script that he reworked before taking it into production. Does it make a difference? We’ll have to see as the film is set to debut at this year’s LDS Film Festival coming up in January 2009 at the Scera Center for the Arts in Orem, UT.