NBA star Steph Curry and Academy Award-winning actress Viola Davis will help bring the story of the devastating Charleston church shooting to the big screen.
“Emanuel,” named after the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, where the shooting took place, will not only detail the devastating event that occurred on June 15, 2015, but it will also include personal testimonies from survivors and victims’ families.
NBA Allstar Steph Curry Ventures Into Faith-Based Filmmaking With New Movie ‘Breakthrough’
The documentary details the mass shooting, when Dylann Roof, a white supremacist, walked into a Bible study at Emanuel AME and killed nine parishioners during their closing prayer.
Curry and Davis are producing the documentary through their media companies, Unanimous Media and JuVee Productions, respectively.
The documentary, directed by Brian Ivie, will feature never before seen interviews with the survivors of the shooting as well as their family members. The producers of the film describe it as “a poignant story of justice and faith, love and hate, and the healing power of forgiveness.”
Davis and her husband, actor and producer Julius Tennon, told The Christian Post that the shooting “served as a stark reminder of the power of racism.”
“That evening, a routine Bible study at Emanuel Church was a soft target based solely on the racial profile of the congregation. We, along with the country, grieved each family’s loss. Yet, miraculously, from this devastation we witnessed tremendous benchmarks of humanity. The survivors found courage to love in the face of hate. JuVee is proud to be a part of this healing and truth telling along with Unanimous Media, Brian Ivie and John Shepherd,” the couple said.
“Emanuel is an incredibly powerful film and we’re honored to come on board as executive producers,” Curry told The Christian Post. “The documentary highlights how a horrible tragedy can bring a community together, and spreads an important message about the power of forgiveness. Stories like this are the reason we created Unanimous and entered the entertainment space. I hope the film inspires others like it does me.”
“Emanuel” premiered at actress Geena Davis’ Bentonville Film Festival in May, and later screened at the Heartland International Film Festival last month in October. It is next set to screen November 14-15 at the DOC NYC festival.
To find out more about “Emanuel” check out the film’s website here.
(H/T: The Christian Post)