Finding a home Story about redemption filmed on Maine coast parallels filmmakers’ lives

“Finding Home,” a movie filmed on the Maine coast, is a story of forgiveness, reconciliation and redemption.

It’s also about persistence and a recognition of the preciousness of life.

The movie stars Academy Award-winner Louise Fletcher from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Golden Globe winner Genevieve Bujold, and Justin Henry, the Oscar-nominated child star of “Kramer vs. Kramer.”

It focuses on an ambitious young executive from New York named Amanda who struggles to reclaim her life and love when she is forced to return to her grandmother’s remote island inn off the Maine coast.

As Amanda unravels the mysteries of her family’s troubled past, she makes discoveries that cause her to re-evaluate her own life and values – something the filmmakers themselves say happened to them.

Directed by Lawrence David Foldes and produced by Victoria Paige Meyerink, the story focuses on the struggles, memories, actions and triumphs of three generations of New England women. The film also stars Jeannetta Arnette (“Boys Don’t Cry”), “Anacondas” star Johnny Messner, Pulitzer Prize-winner Jason Miller (“The Exorcist,” “That Championship Season”) in his final performance, and Lisa Brenner (Mel Gibson’s co-star in “The Patriot” and star of Stephen King’s “Diary of Ellen Rimbauer”).

The film represented a big shift in the careers of Foldes and Meyerink, whose previous credits include action films such as “Young Warriors,” starring Ernest Borgnine, “Nightforce” starring Linda Blair, horror film “Don’t Go Near The Park” and comedic festival favorite “Prima Donnas.”

In a news release the two said they had begun feeling that something was missing in their lives.

By 1998, Meyerink said, she had begun losing her hearing and experiencing muffled sensations, facial tingling and vertigo. She was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma, a benign brain tumor.

With the traditional treatment options available, Meyerink could have lost her hearing on one side, suffered permanent facial weakness or paralysis, and loss of balance.

She and her husband ended up using a new form of radiation treatment.

Toward the end of Meyerink’s treatment, the filmmakers said, they encountered a student who approached them at the International Film & Television Workshops in Rockport, where Foldes and Meyerink have been faculty members.

“We called the student to encourage him to pursue the project because we felt it was touching and worthwhile. He surprised us by saying that he wanted us to make the film and that the company he worked for, a Milwaukee-based Christian organization, had part of the funding,” Foldes said.

He and co-writer Grafton Harper then wrote the screenplay, spending more than a year researching the field of traumatic and repressed memories. They elaborated on the student’s story to include relevant social and psychological issues and messages about the importance of family, sexual responsibility and making the right choices.

The film opens Friday at the Century Theater in Fort Kent, and on Aug. 19 at the Grand in Ellsworth, the Colonial in Belfast, Lincoln County Community Theater in Damariscotta, and the Nickelodeon in Portland.