#BLESSED now available in the USA!

If in Canada, you can stream for free here:

"an intriguing work" - That Shelf

"compelling" - Toronto Star

"sure-to-be-controversial" - Globe and Mail

"a fascinating phenomenon" - Original Cin

May 15, 2020

YOU CAN SEE #BLESSED

At Hot Docs June 4 - 14

On CBC saturday, July 18 8pm

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C3 is an Evangelical church that opened in Toronto in 2013, quickly amassing a large following amongst the city’s young, hip and tattooed. #BLESSED is an intimate look inside this fast-growing millennial church following the process of selling salvation in the 21st century.

As Pastor Sam and his team grow the church from two locations to three, we start to explore the lives of some of its young members. Aspiring pastor David works on a new and chaste relationship with his girlfriend Mona as he prepares to go to C3 College in Australia for a year; former party girl Aimee does a 180 as she turns from coke and a relationship with a woman to a celibate and church-centred life; and Conan throws himself deeper into the church community while struggling to believe. Tying all these stories together is Galen, a young academic fascinated by the church's pull, all the while questioning its tactics.

Much like other viral church start-ups of the 21st century, C3 is tapping into something very real and apparently very needed in the hearts of millennials. While Sam and his team have given church a modern rebranding, it becomes clear as the characters’ stories unfold that what these youth are searching for is not new at all. It is in fact fundamental -- the age old need to be part of something bigger than oneself. But how will C3’s new converts react to its conservative Christian values hidden beneath its shiny new packaging?

DIRECTOR’S NOTE:
I was amazed when I first read about C3. The idea of an evangelical church attended by a fast-growing group of my peers (only more Instagram-ready) was fascinating to me. The millennials I've met in Toronto don’t seem like a group that would flock to an organized religion of any kind, let alone one that is so often associated with conservative values. Yet there was clearly something happening within this new church that was stirring the souls of the Toronto youth.
Even though I am an atheist, the people I met while shooting #BLESSED were all incredibly relatable to me. Whatever propelled their search for God - whether they were feeling alone in the big city, looking for purpose beyond what they found at their jobs, or trying to mend a broken heart - their stories encapsulate the many ways that this evangelical church is holding a mirror up to the experiences of millennials in Toronto today; exposing the loneliness we live with and the lack of meaning on offer to us elsewhere.

WRITER/ DIRECTOR
Ali's directorial debut Mermaids, about a group of women who strongly identify with the aquatic archetype, premiered at Hot Docs in 2017. In 2018, Ali co-directed The Impossible Swim for TSN as part of their Engraved on a Nation series. She has two films at Hot Docs 2020 – she directed #BLESSED (CBC Docs POV) and produced Lulu Wei’s There’s No Place Like This Place, Anyplace (CBC Docs POV) about the redevelopment of the iconic Toronto block where the world famous Honest Ed’s store once lived (produced through the inaugural Telefilm Talent to Watch Program). Ali’s previous work includes two years as Associate Producer at Primitive Entertainment and she is a board member of Breakthroughs Film Festival, which showcases short films by emerging women-identified and non-binary directors.

Director/ Writer ALI WEINSTEIN Producer CORNELIA PRINCIPE
Cinematographer JESSE MCCRACKEN Editor ROBERT SWARTZ 
Associate Producer STEPHANIE WEIMAR Executive Producer NISHA PAHUJA  
Executive in Charge of Production, CBC CHARLOTTE ENGEL Produced by Notice Pictures Inc.
in Association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, with the Participation of the Canada Media Fund and the Assistance of Rogers Telefund, The Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit and Ontario Creates Tax Credit Program.