Spencer Folmar burst onto the movie scene with his hard look at church and the sins we wrestle with in private. Received with some controversy because of harsh language, the film has an 8.5/10 rating on IMDB and established the Grove City College grad as a filmmaker to watch. While he recently wrapped a producer's credit on Warning Shot, a narrative about sin we keep hidden in a battle over water rights, his sights have been set on tackling the opioid epidemic raging in small towns across America. No matter what, he's tackling sin head on through faith and storytelling because it does not take long for him to get fired up about sharing the gospel through story.
"Christianity and Jesus, our faith, are the best thing we can give to the dark portions of our lives but there are few artists who will get into the depths of the depravity to show the only truth that’s going to help," Folmar proposed. "You can have a whole life where your pursuit is happiness, but when your wife is dying and leaving kids behind, you need a stronger anchor to hold onto. Some faith-based films give too many answers to questions that no one was asking."
With Generational Sins, Folmar called out problems in the church, like alcoholism and broken relationships, but it was not a Hallmark movie. The writer/director intended to go west to make a film about prostitution in Las Vegas called The Beast in Me, even forming the LLC to make the movie, recruiting funds and talent to make it happen. But then he went home for Christmas to the little town where he was raised, where God changed the trajectory of his filmmaking efforts.
"Everyone I talked to at church, at markets, everyone had an unreal story about people in the community who died. There were grandparents raising their grandchildren as a result of the opiod epidemic. Some were part of the community, some were just ghosts, having disappeared and no one knew where they were," Folmar explained. "Some people could report on it like the weather; others were isolated and not able to find anyone to talk to. I’d seen it progress, getting worse every year I went home at Christmas. This last visit, it just seemed like a ghost, halloween story you tell to scare them. It’s worse than what anyone was saying."
Convicted that the opioid epidemic was an issue that he was called to shine a light on, Folmar stopped working on The Beast in Me and wrote the script for Shooting Heroin, which now has a July 2019 release date through Folmar's company Hard Faith. After Generational Sins, Folmar put his Third Brothers Film company aside, because too many people could not make the connection to the idea of a third brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Folmar was proposing there be a third brother who loved both the prodigal and the older brother, but it failed to connect outside, so he adopted Hard Faith instead.
For now, Shooting Heroin is in production, as Folmar tells the story of a town overcome by their grief and anger at the deaths of their loved ones to opioids. Hellbent on revenge, the community takes matters into their own hands, but discovers that sin is more complicated than they imagined, and that avenging the deaths of their loved ones might not be the answer they hoped it would be.
Folmar keeps pressing ahead, shining light into the darker corners of our souls, asking the church to step forward and lead the charge. He knows it's an uphill battle but he's convinced that a faithful pursuit of the truth in love will lead to eternal victory.
