Why This Film? Why Now?
While the setting is fictional, this fanciful, thought-provoking tale of a father coming to grips with his son’s mental illness overflows with truth. It is, in a way, an ultimately hopeful postscript to the writer-director’s own journey over the last 20 years.
On July 4, 2000, in Virginia Beach, Cris Krusen watched his son Daniel run down the street like an Olympic sprinter. Unfortunately, the local police were in pursuit. Daniel's mind had come apart and he would spend the holiday weekend in the city's psychiatric unit. By his 18th birthday in 2001, Daniel had been civilly committed to Eastern State Hospital on Ironbound Road in Williamsburg, Virginia. But the long road had barely just begun.
The early chapters of this story were told in Krusen’s book of prayer letters, Let Me Have My Son, published in 2007.