Young director breaks through with brave documentary on Charleston killings and the forgiveness that followed

It says a lot when a young filmmaker works for free to focus on forgiveness. It says even more when survivors of a mass shooting by a white supremacist forgive the killer.

Yet that is exactly what several survivors did just 48 hours after Dylann Roof murdered nine people four years ago in a Charleston, S.C., church.

Now, a feature-length documentary focusing on those who were in the Bible study class when the shooting happened will debut Monday and Wednesday, June 17 and 19, in 900 movie theaters across the nation.

Called “Emanuel” for Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church where the tragedy occurred, the film is produced by actress Viola Davis and Golden State Warriors basketball star Stephen Curry.

Appropriately sober and somber and with a theme of forgiveness, the movie also promises to be uplifting.

Perhaps more than anything, however, it allows us to reflect on our own thoughts and struggles with forgiveness — a hallmark of nearly every religion on Earth.

Even the band The Dixie Chicks examined the issue in a song called “Not Ready to Make Nice.”

“Forgive, sounds good,” Natalie Maines sings. “Forget, I’m not sure I could.”

Finding faith

Brian Ivie, the director of “Emanuel,” is so spiritually distant from typical Hollywood it’s difficult to believe he lives in Los Angeles. But the 28-year-old graduate of USC’s film school does and manages to thrive.

You see, Ivie’s made of sturdy stuff. He’s even brave enough to admit that he believes — really believes — in God. He also lives his faith.

Although he qualifies as a struggling filmmaker, he declined pay on “Emanuel” because he didn’t want to profit from other people’s suffering.

I first met Ivie nearly a decade ago when he was a teenager and had just made a movie that he managed to show at a local cineplex.

Three years later, this auteur wrote, directed and produced a film called “The Drop Box” (available on Amazon), about a pastor in South Korea who put out a box for abandoned babies, nurtured the children and found them homes.

Raised in San Clemente, Ivie put together a volunteer crew for “Drop Box,” flew 6,000 miles and slept at the orphanage because he was broke, but also because he wanted to be close to his subjects.

How close? When the kids got sick, Ivie got sick.

He ended up winning the grand prize of $101,000 at the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival, meaning he pretty much broke even.

While in Korea, Ivie explains, something invisible was born that remains priceless to this day — an intimate connection to the Gospel.

Back then, Ivie boldly promised “to go into the belly of the beast in Hollywood” and make films about faith. “We need,” he said, “to change the whole game.”

Fat chance, I thought. Hollywood is just too seductive.

Day of horror

Just a few days before his latest film debuts across America, Ivie recalls his reaction when he first learned about the Charleston shootings.

He was on his honeymoon in Cancun and was reading his Bible on the balcony when he heard his wife crying. He ran inside and found her watching television.

Two days before, they learned, a racist had slaughtered a group of African Americans during Bible study. For people of faith, the act felt especially evil.

“There is something particularly heartbreaking,” President Barack Obama told the nation, “about death happening in a place in which we seek solace.”

Ivie goes back to that dark day and allows, “It was one of the greatest times of my life clashing with one of the worst times for other people.

“I really didn’t know how to process it.”

At the time, his wife, an account rep for Snapchat, told her husband, “You don’t understand. The family members are forgiving the killer in court right now.”

Ivie quietly offered, “I hope whoever tells their story doesn’t skip that part.

“It’s something supernatural.”

Ivie never forgot that day. But because he wasn’t African American, it didn’t feel right to presume he was the right director for the project.

A year later, he flew to New York for a different project to talk to Pastor Dimas Salaberrios, founder of Infinity Bible Church and a worldwide preacher. But Salaberrios sensed Ivie’s heart wasn’t in the topic they were discussing.

“What story do you really want to tell?” Salaberrios asked.

Ivie immediately replied, “I want to tell the story of what happened in Charleston.”

Salaberrios understood. He had traveled to Charleston immediately after the shootings to help console the grieving.

With the backing of a group of people Ivie met at a home in Connecticut, Salaberrios and Ivie were soon on their way to Charleston to lay groundwork for bringing in a film crew.

At first, it was, well, awkward. But when the survivors learned that forgiveness was the theme, Ivie was welcomed with tears of gratitude.

“Some died,” Ivie explains, “with Bibles in their hands.”

Finding forgiveness

Ephesians tells us, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

It’s a simple sentence, but an exceptionally challenging one.

Ivie shares he, too, struggles. “In my life I am always trying to find where God is when life doesn’t make sense.” There are times, he admits, “I wonder how God allows things to go on.”

Yet over several months of filming in Charleston, Ivie found insight.

One of the witnesses, Polly Sheppard, shared — just as she shares in the film — her feelings about the killer, “I wasn’t going to let it eat me the rest of my life, you know? So I had to forgive him.”

Nadine Collier, who lost her mother, Ethel Lance, in the bloodshed, was another of the first to forgive. “I knew that’s what my mom would want,” she explains. “Not to have hatred in your heart, despite what people do to you.”

Still, as most of us know first-hand, forgiveness can be elusive.

Collier’s 52-year-old sister, Esther Lance, a year after the shooting said publicly, “I’m still grieving too much to forgive.”

Regardless, Lance continues to attend the landmark African American church founded in 1816 and when she does, she always thinks of her mother.

“I go through that room,” Lance confides, “and say, ‘Hey, Mama, I made it to church.’”

Honoring anniversaries

As filming continued, crew and church members built bonds. Survivors even invited Ivie over for dinner on several occasions.

“These people live out that kind of faith and love on a daily basis,” Ivie shares, “and I got to see that up close and personal.

“Instead of having their faith shattered,” he explains, “they found empowerment to help heal others.”

At a recent screening at Howard University, Curry offered his own personal perspective. “I try to picture myself, like, would I have the awareness to respond that way?

“Would I have the maturity and the courage and the strength to say, ‘This isn’t going to defeat me’?”

Although “Emanuel” also will be available in September through iTunes and Amazon, Ivie hopes people watch it in theaters.

“Cinemas are one of the few places where you can experience something together at the same time,” the director points out, “and that can lead to healing and change.

“People praying together, black and white.”

June 17 marks the anniversary of the killings. June 19 honors the day survivors walked into court and told the killer they forgave.

For more, go to emanuelmovie.com.