This film took me nearly fifteen years to make, easily three times as long as any of my other projects. 

Its sluggishness stemmed, in part, from my profound discomfort in telling a story so seemingly self-absorbed – an autobiographical documentary composed from my experiences, my journal, my voiceovers.  Moreover, my favored status as a white, cis-gender, upper middle-class, educated, straight, able-bodied male seemed to beg the question of narcissism: why should my voice take up space?  

At the same time, many of the delays derived from how the film lays bare some of my deepest spiritual, psychological, moral, and familial vulnerabilities.   

Unlike my experience making other documentaries, production for this film was improvisational and ever evolving. Because I had not kept in contact with the people I knew in Guatemala, I was not able to organize visits, schedule interviews, or make plans in advance; I literally had no idea what I’d find after twenty-five years.

So why did I return there, and why is the film something I now am ready to release?

The film is about searches that are never fulfilled, yearnings that cannot be sustained, certainties plagued and then nourished by doubt. I’ve often asked myself, “Did you get what you want?” Instead, I’ve come to want what I got; the film is less about seeking and finding than it is about simply seeking. 

My primary search was for my own worthiness.

Mormonism’s claim to unique religious truth and authority draws a bright line for insiders and outsiders; great social meaning accrues around whether someone is an active and faithful member or has “fallen away.”  I felt the pressure of that rigidity as I grew up, and I never felt comfortable in such a binary narrative. Ultimately, in my shifting beliefs about and commitments to Mormonism, I was transformed from an insider to an outsider – to my religious and cultural traditions, but also to my family, the people I love the most. 

In the film I wanted to explore how crossing over that bright line mattered or not, but rather than probe the question directly with my family, I decided to pursue it with the people in a foreign land who’d known me at my most devout, when I was most committed to the church as a spiritual tradition and as a religious institution. 

Mormonism was the precise context within which I had a more universal experience – a coming-of-age struggle for self-knowledge and self-acceptance that spanned generations and crossed cultural divides. None of us is ever exactly what others want us to be; our lives are continual, ongoing negotiations of our differences, and in the end, we must answer for ourselves what we are worth.

This film, then, is not really about (or for) Mormons, not so much a privileged white man’s story as it is a sincere inquiry into how to do good in the world, how to make sense of and take responsibility for the impact one has on others. It is about what happens to friendships as time passes and people change. And it is about the possibility of dignity, love, and respect – both because and in spite of shared experiences now left behind.

— Geoff Pingree