A new family-friendly Christmas movie written and produced in South Florida will be released in video and On Demand December 5. “Faith Filled Christmas,” written and produced by local screenwriter Don McChesney, is a fun, uplifting movie with major themes of foster care and adoption. It features nursing home pranksters and a community of families invested in foster care and adoption played by local actors who are dedicated to such servitude in real life.

 

Synopsis

“Faith Filled Christmas” tells the benevolent story of Mildred and Simon Fairway, grandparents of a unique and diverse family who, amidst receiving unfortunate news, seek to spread joy during the Christmas season. Simon and his friend Byron spend the day bringing cheer to the other members of the nursing home by designing an elaborate set of pranks, while Mildred and her bitter friend Betty visit their grandkids. As the pairs go about their day, a variety characters confront life issues and demonstrate altruistic acts. This wholesome film provides positive examples of foster care ministry, evangelism and charity as well as relatable life lessons. With moments of deep, thought-provoking conversation and light, heartwarming humor, it’s a film appropriate for all ages, and a film your family can watch year after year.

 

Production

The journey of creating “Faith Filled Christmas” began in November of 2014, when McChesney started writing its script. It took fifteen months to solidify the screenplay. They shot the film tirelessly for 22 days in South Florida. McChesney submitted “Faith Filled Christmas” to the Christian Worldview Film Festival in San Antonio and the International Christian Film Festival in Orlando, and it got accepted into both. This allowed his team to meet potential distributors. McChesney said, “Selecting a distributor was a challenging decision, but we are very happy with the agreement with Freestyle. They have relationships with all of the big online platforms and a large number of cable and TV outlets.” While the movie was originally titled, “Salted Christmas,” McChesney said, “The distributor asked for the name change. They wanted to have something that let the audience interested in faith-based films know that’s what it is.”

 

Obstacles

From financing to the musical score, McChesney said the production of “Faith Filled Christmas” has been full of trials, but God’s will prevailed. “For example, we had problems with music licensing and were not able to get a couple of songs we really wanted in the film. They were either too expensive or just not available for contractual reasons. But we were able to find wonderful replacements we could afford.”

After a composer for the background music decided not to do it, we got Grace Coleman, who was our composer. We had someone in mind for one of the lead roles who decided not to do it. But then God gave us Michael Liddle, who I think is the best actor in the film! The God stories for this film seemed to be frequently that we have something good lined up and it falls through; we are devastated, then God provides something better. It happened so many times that when something fell through, we just knew something better was coming.”

 

Release

Faith Filled Christmas will be released December 5th. It will be viewable on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play, Hulu, and other sites. To keep up with Faith Fill Christmas visit www.facebook.com/manifestpictures/ .

 

Gabriella Morris is a student at Florida State University and writer at Good News. She can be reached [email protected].