Rising Hope – With Director Q&A

Rising Hope spent five years inside the Mississippi Delta, one of the most persistently
impoverished regions in the United States, listening to the people who live and work there —
educators, faith leaders, nonprofit organizers, veterans, and young people finding their way
forward against long odds.

The film doesn’t offer easy answers. It offers something rarer: real people doing real work, in real places, for each other.

In a time when the national conversation about race, poverty, and community often generates
more heat than light, Rising Hope steps back from the noise and into the lives of people who
have been navigating these realities for generations. Their stories are not about despair. They
are about what it looks like when people refuse to give up on one another — and on
themselves.

The film — shot in anamorphic widescreen and described by audiences as recalling the visual
language of Terrence Malick — presents a grounded American story rooted in lived experience
rather than headlines. It invites audiences not only to reflect, but to reconsider what
responsibility to community can look like in their own lives.

Rising Hope is a collaboration between Academy Award-winning producer Lynn Appelle, Emmy
Award-winning composer Alex Wurman, and director Theo Avgerinos, whose debut feature
premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.