Grace

When a pastor’s son discovers that his father’s religious movement has become a dangerous and seductive cult of personality, he must shatter the only world he’s ever known to escape his father’s shadow.

Writer/Director: R.J. Glass
Producer: Amanda Freedman
Producer: Froso Tsipopoulou
Producer: Daniel Leighton
Cinematographer: Celine Layous
Production Designer: Gemma Fenol
Editor: Qing Shao
Composer: Martin Velez

Starring
Rory Gibson as Lucas
Robb Derringer as Eli Walker Jr.
and Kyson Facer as Matty

Jacob Anaya as Nick
James Berardo as Volunteer 1
Michael Litchfield as Volunteer 2
Daniel Peera as Volunteer 3

Isaac W. Jay as Aaron
Brendan Shannon as Adam
Christopher Odom as Seth
Matthew Ben Miller as Jared
Michael Lyons as Noah
Ezekiel Pacheco as Isaac
Andrew Burton as Jake
Julian Astudillo as David
Jonathan Moreira as Sam

Featuring “Los Clusters” as the Grace Band

Stunt Coordinator: Katie Rowe
Assistant Stunt Coordinator: Lisa Hoyle

Unit Production Manager: Talya Stern
First Assistant Director: Dave Halls
Second Assistant Director: Dimitris Tsilifonis

Casting: Becky Silverman, CSA and Lisa Zambetti, CSA

Camera Operator: Celine Layous
Underwater Camera Operator: Matthew Barauskas
First Assistant Camera: Teck Siang Lim
First Assistant Camera, Second Unit: Joel Schaeffer
Second Assistants Camera: Ben Cohen, Arianna Franklin, Tristan Moffatt, Leah O’Conner
DIT: Anton Savlik
Still Photographer: Jackie Bao

Gaffer: Ben Long
Best Boy Electric: Tim Watson
Key Grip: Mathieu Seguin
Best Boy Grip: Erique Duboise
Dolly Grip: Nick Mullen
Grips: Jeff Alexander, Jonathan Breiner, Daye Chen, Spinnaker Greenberg, Sam Robin-Tani, Daniel Short, Keiry Vera, Jack Yuran
Electricians: Troy Cummings, Arianna Franklin, Emma Juncosa, Rodolfo Martinez, Sam Pemberton, Andreas Xenopoulos

Script Supervisor: Lucia Pier

Production Coordinators: Kaiulani Bush, Rachel Ichimura, Elizabeth Bates

Location Managers: Thomas Leicke, Mark King

Assistant Editor: Maria Fernanda Freire

Production Sound Mixer: Michael Crumley, Ted Phillips, Mike Robertson
Boom Operator: Jonny Edpao

Art Director: Masha Lyass
Graphic Designer: Andrew Diemer
Art Department Assistants: Rose Marquez, Ekaterina Nezhnikova, Alanna Rose, Rodrigo Reyna
Set Dresser: Sam Erickson
Construction Coordinator: Sam Erickson

Costume Designer: Paola Erazun
Costumer: Ethan Lieberman
Hair and Make-up: Brittany Victoria

Storyboard Artist: Raymond Consing

Post Sound by MelodyGun Group
Sound Supervisor: Hamed Hokamzadeh
Supervising Sound Editor: Thomas Ouziel
Sound Editor: Xiaodan Li

Digital Intermediate by LIGHT IRON
DI Colorist: Ethan Schwartz

Visual Effects: Justin Chandra, Peter Fink
Title Design: Andrew Diemer

Special Thanks: Chris Allick, Sang-jin Bae, Gabrielle Cordero, Tom Discepola, Evan Hanlon, Suzanne Kayne, Katelyn Means, Nicolas Pacheco Monroy, Justin Piasecki, Rex Reyes, Joe Walker, Jon Yi, Ciro Apicella, Marshmallow The Cat, Andrew Diemer, Cameron Fowler, Robert Ivison, Alexandra Kalogridi, Samir Oliveros, Dimitris Tsilifonis, Andreas Tsipopoulou, Nezih Tolga Yardimci, Fuxin Fowler Zhang, Talia Zucker

When we’re growing up, our parents are our whole world. The sun rises and sets with them, until one day we realize that they’re fallible. All of the sudden, we start to see them as people with their own flaws and foibles. With GRACE, we set out to capture the feeling of that moment. We wanted to tell a thrilling and twisted coming-of-age story about a son’s discovery that his father is not a god.

The story follows Lucas Walker, an ambitious teenage boy born into his father’s alternative religious movement called “Grace.” Lucas is in charge of recruiting young men into his father’s flock but, when a rite of initiation goes terribly wrong for his newest recruit, Lucas struggles to untangle himself from his father’s cult of personality and forge his own identity.

This story is set in the world of hipster megachurches and preachers with sneakers. This is an evangelical culture of the millennial faithful that mixes social media savvy with Bronze Age religious traditions. While these churches may present a youthful face, their progressive veneer masks a patriarchal culture that evangelizes fundamentalist beliefs. There’s no amount of streetwear that can cover up what’s often going on behind the scenes: a culture of abuse, sex scandals, gay conversion therapy, tax evasion, predatory tithing, the list goes on.

You may have seen your favorite actor or musician hanging out with their cool pastor recently and, if you looked closely enough, you may have seen us as we spent months researching their churches and immersing ourselves in their community here in L.A. From this experience, we were able to craft our own fictional house of worship here in Los Angeles at the epicenter of the collision between church and cool.

Within this world, we wanted to tell the story of a young man facing a life-changing decision between community, family, and self-dependence while trying to escape his father’s shadow. The question that this film asks, most simply, is: Are we destined to become our parents? That’s a question we all struggle with and we’ll spend our lives grappling with the consequences.

Thanks to our incredible producers Amanda, Froso, and Daniel, our amazing DP Celine, our gifted editor Qing, and our brilliant designer Gemma. We owe a great debt to Rory, Robb, and Kyson who put everything they had into these roles.

-R.J. Glass, Director