This is my first ever passion project. It was completely produced, funded, shot, and written by my friends and I. the film exists to juxtapose what so many boys hear and have heard their entire lives on what it means to be a man, with what real masculinity actually is, which is modeled perfectly for us in the person of christ. I grew up without a father or any male in the house so masculinity was always something I felt like I needed to figure out on my own. So I did what I thought men meant when they said to “Be a man” or to “Toughen up”, I shoved every emotion and feeling down because i was told that’s what made me weak. as i grew up i fronted toughness and bought the lie that my lack of tears correlated with my masculinity. towards the end of high school i greatly struggled with my mental health and it was a challenge just to wake up in the morning. i then lost 3 of my buddies to suicide, they were 18, 20, and 22 years old. this film is largely dedicated to them. all of them passed within an 18 month span and that’s when i knew something had to change. you see one mother bury her son and it haunts you for the rest of your life. you see three do it and your brain turns off to not feel what no one should have to feel, simply to protect yourself from what or who might be next.

But i can say now that i have tasted and i have seen. I have learned that masculinity is not the absence or drowning of emotion, but the mastery and control of it. so, by the deep work he has done in my heart, i speak the mighty name of jesus over the darkness that thinks it’s winning. i speak the blood of jesus over the lies that the enemy has rooted deep into the minds and hearts of our men. psalm 107: 19-20 says, “Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He sent out his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave.” he is not done yet. he is in the business of making the broken whole. i firmly believe that the enemy wants to target men because he knows that if husbands fold, if church leaders cower, and if the man as a whole breaks under the weight of this world, then everyone else goes down with the ship. but we must hold onto the words of jesus in john 16:33, “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

This film exists to speak to the broken man who believes he’s too far gone and to tell him that it is not too late. because there is nowhere we can run where the grace of god cannot go, no sin that cannot be washed under his blood, and no man who cannot call on the name of jesus and be met with open arms. my goal while writing this film was simply to slide an invitation across the table to the viewer, an invitation to look to the person of christ to find out what being a man really means. to christ be the glory.

“be a man boy”, coming soon.