An independent film that charts an intensely personal quest for meaning, The Return of Elder Pingree - Memoir of a Departed Mormon premiered at the Santa Cruz Film Festival, received last year’s Grand Jury Prize at the Lonely Seal International Film, Screenwriting, and Music Festival, won both Best Director and Best Documentary Feature awards at Irvine, California’s Silent River Film Festival, and is now available for streaming on Amazon Prime and through Filmocracy.
The film was showcased at this year’s Cannes Festival online and will be showcased at next year’s festival in France.
Lapsed Mormon Geoff Pingree retraces the steps he took twenty-five years earlier in Guatemala as devout missionary 'Elder Pingree'.
Combining archival material and contemporary footage as it moves from jungle village to national capital, The Return of Elder Pingree - Memoir of a Departed Mormon pairs the young Elder Pingree's earlier, single-minded journey with the older Geoff Pingree's ambivalent return to Guatemala now as he seeks to discover what has become of the Guatemalans who once trusted him with their religious faith, attempts to understand the violent and unsettling political conditions of which he was ignorant as a regimented missionary, and grapples with the basic human dilemma of how one might do good in the world.
“When I write in my journal my thoughts drift to friends and family -- I need to fight this. I count on my own intelligence too much and don’t rely on the Lord enough. I’ll keep trying to be more humble.”
