The Devout is a crisis-of-faith drama about the life of 4-year old Abigail who is fighting terminal cancer with only weeks to live. As the family struggles with her sickness, her father, Daryl, becomes convinced of Abigail’s ability to reincarnate after death. Mesmerized by her fascination with space and eerily realistic knowledge of the Apollo 1 space mission,Daryl, a devout Christian, faces a crisis of faith when he starts believing that Abigail was an astronaut in a former life.

The Devout was inspired by writer/director Connor Gaston, who as a child, used to tell his own parents  of his past life as  a carpenter named ‘Mark’ who died by falling off a roof. This idea of personal reincarnation stayed with Conor and led him to research other children who claim to have had past lives.

The Devout has made the rounds at festivals around the world and has won numerous awards including the BC Emerging Filmmaker award, Best Canadian Feature at the Victoria film festival, and seven 2016 Leo Awards. Most recently, The Devout was nominated for the special Canadian Screen Award, the John Dunning Discovery Award.

We sat down with producer Amanda Verhagen and actress Gabrielle Rose to talk about what it means to be recognized by the Canadian Academy for The Devout.

“I think it’s incredibly important to support emerging talent. We are the next generation of storytellers and the stories that we tell influence how we think, the conversations that we have and if we don’t have diverse stories then our world isn’t changing, growing and expanding” – Amanda Verhagen, Producer

Watch our full sit-down interview here.

The Devout is a Micro-budget recipient and Talent Fund supported film. You can watch this and many more incredible Canadian film at www.itunes.com/RendezVousCanada!