International Adventist Film Project Will Highlight the Role of Fathers

By: Tracey Bridcutt, Adventist Record

An Australian man is part of a Seventh-day Adventist international film project that puts a spotlight on the role of fathers in families. Adventist businessman and father of two Justin Stafford is one of six dads featured in Fathers, an inter-cultural documentary initiated by Adventist media entities in Europe.

The film’s director, Adrian Dure, said the purpose of the project is to create content that can inspire, motivate, and orient families and show the importance of fathers in today’s society.

“The role of fathers for the family is very important, and there is not too much material about fathers or for fathers,” he said. “The movie shows the lives and types of relationships of six fathers from six different countries, with their children.”

Dure said that the primary idea behind the movie is to stress the importance of a father’s role. “[We want to] show the value of being a father for our families around the world. The cultural aspect is also important, to see the differences and similarities between families.”

Dads from Cuba, Spain, Lebanon, South Africa, and South Korea also feature in the documentary.

Dure, who is network projects coordinator for Stimme der Hoffnung, the Adventist Church’s European Media Center, said the project came out of discussions between European members of the Global Adventist Internet Network (GAiN).

“Even though this is originally a European project, we decided to produce the documentary including many countries and cultures from other parts of the world, because we considered that the cultural aspect is very important,” he said.

Adventist Media in Sydney shot the Australian footage. Producer Mariana Venturi said the scenes of Stafford and his two young children depict their daily routine and interaction, from morning until bedtime, on the family’s rural property in northern New South Wales.

“Being in communication with our European colleagues and being part of this bigger project is so exciting. There are possibilities for us to do it more and more from now on,” Venturi said. “It shows that we are part of a wider mission. We have this amazing network of talent of people on different continents, and it’s great to be able to collaborate on something like this.”

The entire project contains several types of media besides video, including podcasts and print resources.

Fathers will premiere at the next GAiN meeting, to be held in Amman, Jordan, February 22-March 1. The resources will then be made available for the rest of the world to use.

The original version of this story was posted on the Adventist Recordnews page.