A Retreat Where the Secret Is Leaving the Faith

Deadline reports on Heathens, a documentary whose premise is social rather than theological. Five strangers meet at a retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains, each carrying the same kind of secret: they have left their religious backgrounds behind, which puts them potentially at odds with their families, their communities and Christian churches. Read that description closely and the conflict it sets up is not a debate about belief. The anticipated rupture is with the people around them, which is what makes the retreat setting do the work — a room where something can be said that can't be said at home. David Cowan and Shawn Hardin directed and produced.