Lea Bender

A Croatian soldier turned boxer is haunted by disturbing dreams of the Virgin Mary that lead him to post-911 America (Oakland) to fulfill a religious vision in this suspenseful and timely look at the violence underlying any form of fundamentalism. Made in the months following the 9/11 attacks, the film offers a warning to anyone who misreads religious texts as a means to profaning the holiness of life.

The power of a long-buried family secret becomes unleashed when the extreme rituals of a young punk rocker catapults his consciousness into the spirit realm in search of his Finnish father, a ship captain who drowned in the Bering Sea. His father's mother was a Sami sorceress whose shamanic powers were passed on to her grandson, powers tested as he enters the mythic dreams of his Finnish grandfather. A surrealistic fable of true love, giant hedgehogs, and the mystical depths of ancestral bonds.