Hard redemption

Grace doesn't come cheap in That Evening Sun | Bearden Coleman

Freestyle Releasing

Built tall and broad, with blond hair hanging down to shoulders and a full beard, Georgia-born film director Scott Teems, a professing Christian, looks as if he'd be more comfortable with an axe handle than a camera—but it's with a camera that he confronts the South, Christianity, and manhood.

When I asked him about That Evening Sun, his debut feature film (and an award winner at five major film festivals this year), Teems spoke of the South, which he calls a "quote unquote Christian culture which is 10 times less Christian than a lot of non-Christian cultures. . . . There's a respect for the tradition of the Christian faith but very little understanding of what it actually means. . . . No one ever pushes us into understanding of what we are really called to be."