The new film’s director, Josh Weigel, The Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot,talked Breitbart News Saturday Speaking about the story on which the film is based, he said he hopes “people will get involved” in foster care and adoption after watching the film, calling it “necessary” as well as “difficult but rewarding.”
The film, which hits theaters on July 4, “is based on events that happened in East Texas,” Weigel explained, after Pastor Martin and his wife, Donna, began adopting children from the foster care system, “and encouraged their churches to get involved, and eventually 22 families adopted 77 children from the foster care system.”
“Another thing I’d point out is, they went after the hardest kids to care for. I mean, they weren’t just looking for little babies. They were really interested in doing anything to change the lives of kids who were really, really in need. And that meant kids who had been badly abused. Kids with lots of siblings, big families of three, four, five kids, and they didn’t want to separate them. And sometimes that meant teenagers. And they accomplished this probably in just a few years from when they started. It was a very short time before all of the kids were institutionalized,” Weigel said.
“What’s really interesting and powerful about this story is that this is a small community with no special training. They’re just like everyone else. It’s not even a town, really, it’s more like a small neighborhood, you could drive by it and you’d barely notice it. It’s one of those places that’s very common in the South. What’s remarkable is that they came together and said, ‘This is something that’s happening and we have to do something about it.’ They didn’t overthink it or say yes or no based on their own skill set,” Weigel added.
When asked what he hopes audiences take away from the film, Weigel said he hopes “people relate” and realize that “the foster care system is the leading cause of child trafficking in America.”
“We were looking for different things when choosing the stories. My wife and I worked together, we wrote and produced it. Of course we really hope people get involved. One of the first things we want to see is for people to get involved. There is a foster care crisis in America that people don’t usually know about. We all kind of know about it, but we don’t really acknowledge it or think about it deeply. There are 400,000 children in the foster care system right now and 100,000 children who need homes. That sounds like a big number. And we’re talking about churches, but if you think about all the churches in America, there are 400,000 churches. So if a quarter of the churches adopted one child, we wouldn’t have a problem,” Weigel said.
“Another important thing that I want people to know and that I want people to take away is that the foster care system is the leading cause of child trafficking in the United States. 70-90% of children who are trafficked come from or have been in the foster care system in the United States. There’s a lot to take away from this film. There’s a lot that we want people to understand, to know, and hopefully connect with in a way that makes them want to get involved. What we’re saying isn’t necessarily, ‘Adopt a child, become a foster parent.’ Not everyone can do that. We hope people will consider it, but we know that not everyone can. There are a lot of other ways to get involved. At the end of the film, we’re going to connect people through a website that explains how they can get involved in that care or how they can help families reunite with their children or meet the needs of families so that they don’t end up in the foster care system.”
Weigel said his own experience of adopting two children was “a big part of the passion” that made him feel he “had to make” the film.
“We had adopted two children, and that was before this movie came into our lives. That was definitely a big part of the passion behind this movie. I don’t remember how many years it was, but it wasn’t very long. We were still new to this. I knew a little bit about this story. I’d heard some things. But after meeting Reverend Martin and hearing more about what the adopted kids in Possum Trot went through, and our own experiences, it took over for us. We really, really felt like we had to do this. All the elements that were needed for a great movie were in place. It took us a while to work it out and figure out how to get it on the page, but all the elements that were needed for a great movie were in place,” Weigel added.
“We don’t want to make a movie that doesn’t have the potential to change something and impact people. We drew a lot from our own experiences and I think that brought authenticity to a lot of things. Authenticity was a very important priority for us and something that we focused on when we were doing this. We’re not really interested in making a very soft, sugary movie that people think of when they think of adoption. Adoption is necessary and powerful and difficult and challenging and there’s a lot that goes into it. There’s a lot of nuances, a lot of challenges, and we know that it’s really important that people understand and respond to that well, so we have to be honest about what it’s like, and then I think there will come a time when we can really get people committed to it in the long term,” Weigel said.
Watch: Sound Of Hope: The Story Of Possum Trot | Official Trailer | Angel Studios
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