About the Film
Jesus Fish is a Southern short film about a would be religious con artist and his adopted brother who are pitted against aquatic folklore incarnate.
Synopsis:
On the shores of "Tennessee's only bio-luminescent lake," the line between myth and reality is blurred. Would be con artist, Timothy West, will walk this line, improvising one elaborate scheme after another to keep the money he stole from the church and pass himself off as a repentant miracle worker. With his adopted brother, Light, reluctantly at his side, Timothy seems bound to make a clean getaway, unless a certain legend turns out to be real.
Dramatic Narrative, 22min. More on IMDb.
Watch the film.
From the Director
"What if Flannery O'Connor made a monster movie?" The combination of that question and an unnatural obsession with Night of the Hunter led to the making of Jesus Fish.
Nowadays in the South we've traded the demented preacher, murdering on the whim of God, for a more ubiquitous but equally sinister phenomenon. Holy theft. In plain sight, glorified on kitchen TV sets, and justified by the Bible. It's easy to say that only simple-minded people would be taken in by such a scam.
But the "simple-minded" people of East Tennessee turned out to be not so simple. They opened up their homes, church's and BBQ stands to help us tell this story. Because, like the film's protagonist, Light West, many of them have been betrayed by someone in the name of God. They connect to the pain, even the absurd humor of it all. And in the end, in spite of logic and their own experiences, they connected with the impossibility of love.
This is a movie for believers. In myth. In magic. In the death of our worst selves.
Soli Deo Gloria,
Bryce James McGuire