City Reels: Vancouver’s Independent Cinema Guide

Sons of Perdition

Big Love gets real messy in this emotionally wrenching documentary about young runaways from a Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) community on the Utah-Arizona border. Like BC’s Bountiful community, this FLDS group is presided over by Church leader Warren Jeffs from his US jail cell. Jeffs’ soothing ministrations, with their promises of salvation for quiescent wives and obedient children, carry a nasty undertow. Challenge the Church and lose everything: family, friends, job and home. Oh, and face eternal damnation for your sins. It’s a powerful stick to wield over consenting adults, but as for the kids, the Church’s weapons of choice are indoctrination (fostered by ignorance and isolationism), and marriage as early as 12 or 13 (for the girls, of course). Teenage boys may be considered superfluous to requirements. Sons of Perdition is the story of three such, Joe, Sam and Bruce, trying to make a go off it outside the Crick, and hoping to convince their mothers and sisters to join them in the real world.

This special screening will be followed by a panel discussion about the FLDS and the current constitutional battle over the legality of polygamy.

“Inspiring in its snapshot of independence blossoming amidst oppression, heartbreaking in its empathetic portrayal of lost young men permanently scarred by their elders, and infuriating in its clear-sighted depiction of the criminal and emotional horrors perpetrated in the service of religious psychosis.” – Nick Schager, Slant

Film Screening followed by a panel discussion.

• Opens Tuesday May 17th at Vancity Theatre