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Family & Children’s Place was proud to partner in a local independent film project that promised to pull no punches. We are prouder still by the remarkable receptions the film – produced in Louisville’s Portland Community with local producers, writers, crew members, and musicians – is receiving after its debut at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

The film is “Beauty Mark,” and its subject is child abuse.

We also are looking forward to its local debut later this month in the Louisville Film Society’s Flyover Film Festival. The showing, at 7 p.m. Friday, July 28, will be at the Bomhard Theater in the Kentucky Center, 501 W. Main Street, in downtown Louisville.

The fact that a film about such a dark subject – the crisis of child abuse – is getting rave reviews attests to the excellent filmmaking by some of the movie’s principals, director Harris Doran and executive producers and locals Ashley Kate Adams and Gil Holland. But it also affirms that people grasp the gravity of abuse and are willing to view it unfiltered and to join –through their support of the film – in the battle to end it.

There’s star power to the story as well, which features Lexington native Laura Bell Bundy (who appears in the new “Jumanji” film and had a role in “Dreamgirls”), as well as Catherine Curtain, who appears in Orange is the New Black.” Both have spoken about how important it was to them to be a part of the telling of the story.

Inspired by true events, the story is of a young mother, Angie, taking care of her three-year-old son and her alcoholic mother in a poverty-stricken area of downtown Louisville. Learning the house they’re living in has been condemned and that they must move immediately, Angie, with only $65 to her name, faces a harsh reality. The only place to get the money she needs is from the man who abused her as a child.

It’s gritty, it’s real and it’s a story that deserves as wide an audience as possible, so we hope you will make it a point to purchase tickets. Admission is $9 to see the film, $7 for film society members, and you can purchase them here.

A question and answer session will immediately follow the screening with Doran and include Pam Darnall, president/CEO of Family & Children’s Place, and other special guests. Doran will discuss the making of the film and the significance of it being filmed in Louisville and will join Darnall in talking about the prevalence of child violence, abuse and neglect, and the need to tackle it individually and as a community.

“We can’t solve the problem alone,” says Darnall. “It’s everyone’s responsibility to help end child abuse, and this film helps deliver that message through a very popular and powerful medium.”

Following the Q&A, there will be an after-party for Flyover filmmakers, audience members, sponsors and the public in the lobby of the Kentucky Center for the Arts. Local musicians whose work is featured in the films will perform, and there will be a cash bar and affordable bites available for purchase. The Kentucky Center for Performing Arts is co-presenting the after party.

You can find the film’s Facebook page here, and read local columnist Sarah Haven’s story here, and a review by Jennie Kermode, Eye for Film, here.

Please join us at 7 p.m., July 28, for an important, impactful event – a screening of “Beauty Mark.”