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Veteran documentary filmmaker Kirby Dick (DERRIDA) provides a focused look at child molestation perpetrated by Catholic priests and the associated cover-up by the church hierarchy in TWIST OF FAITH. Telling a true story, Toledo firefighter Tony Comes is the film's movingly blunt subject. At age 14, a priest and religion teacher in his school began to abuse him, as well as a host of other boys. Tony admitted the abuse to his family, but chose to move on with his life--until years later when he moved to a new neighborhood and discovered his abuser living only five houses away. Unleashing his buried rage, Tony sues both the former priest and the church. The guilt, hatred, and desire for revenge tear Tony apart. He questions his relationship with the church and its ideals, which had always provided the moral basis of his life. He has problems relating to his family and friends--arguing with lifelong friends over the church's role in his abuse, arguing with his mother over her response to his lawsuit, and arguing with his wife over his anger and depressive withdrawal from life.
The most intimate moments in this sensitive film are highlighted through a technique where subjects are given their own cameras to record their feelings and stories in testimonials. In one particularly moving self-filmed scene, Tony and his wife explain the gravity of the situation to their young daughter--the details of which clearly make the family uncomfortable, and which has the same effect on the viewer. Through Tony, and his unflinching willingness to share both the graphic details of his experience and his rawest of emotions, Dick effectively captures the pain and anguish felt by all survivors of child molestation.
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