Special Guest Dawn Mikkelson Attending
Dawn Mikkelson’s Risking Light is a meditation on forgiveness, layered with a theme that is rarely seen on the screen—forgiving the unforgivable. Five years prior to making the film, Mikkelson met Mary Johnson and O’Shea Israel, a meeting she describes as a life-changing event that would lead to the development of Risking Light. It was then she learned that Johnson had chosen to forgive Israel for the murder of her son, which motivates the tone of humanistic mission in the film.
Along with sharing Johnson and Israel’s story, Mikkelson and her crew travel to Cambodia and Australia, where they hear more stories of forgiveness from two members of Australia’s Aboriginal “Lost Generation”—some of the stories are simple while others are devastating. And throughout the film, the stories told all serve as a reflection of a universal theme—compassion.
Director Biography
Dawn Mikkelson is a producer and director whose work has screened at festivals from around the globe, including the Cambridge Film Festival and the International Documentary Festival. She has won a number of awards, including an Emmy and the McKnight Filmmaking Fellowship.
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