News
“All Roads Lead Home”: A New Film About Giving All Living Creatures A Chance
September 16, 2008, 6:53PM MT
By Sandi Cain
Coming out on DVD on Tuesday, January 13
Coming out on DVD on Tuesday, January 13
By Sandi Cain, Best Friends Network Volunteer
UPDATE 1/8/08:
Described by Michele Gentile of HomeTown News as "A family movie with a powerful cast and a compelling message," the film “All Roads Lead Home” is being released to DVD this Tuesday, January 13.
This best feature drama winner from the "International Family Film Festival" highlights the love between a young girl and her horse and dog and presents a positive image of animals in a family-friendly manner.
For more information, please check out the All Roads Lead Home website and their profile on Facebook.
True family movies with a message that resonates with every age group are sometimes hard to find. But if you and your loved ones long for a heart-warming movie like “Lassie,” “Benji” or even “Lady and the Tramp,” independent director and producer Dennis Fallon of Waldo West Productions in Los Angeles and Kansas City has a real treat in store for you. It’s called “All Roads Lead Home.” It’s not maudlin. It’s not a ‘message’ movie. Yet it has a touching message of love, life and the role animals play in connecting with people and helping them through thick and thin. And if there is a take-away, it’s about giving all living things a chance, no matter what—a message that resonates throughout Best Friends Animal Society.
A Labor of Love
For Fallon, who also produced “More Than Puppy Love,” and has created features for Showtime, Lifetime and Movie Channel, it was a labor of love that took two years to bring to market. Based on snippets of real-life incidents, “All Roads Lead Home” tells the story of 12-year-old Belle whose world is torn apart when her mother is killed in a car wreck while trying to avoid a deer in the road. Belle (Vivien Cardone of “Everwood”) becomes belligerent and difficult in trying to cope with her grief and is sent by her animal control officer father Cody (Jason London of “A Man in the Moon”) to live with her grandfather on a ranch. The cast also includes Peter Boyle (Everybody Loves Raymond) in his last film before he succumbed to cancer.
Belle’s grandpa (Peter Coyote) is a dog breeder who allows an employee to toss a litter of puppies into the river to ‘preserve the breed.’ Belle, horrified, dives in after them, setting her off on her quest as an animal advocate. The quest leads her through her grief and sets her on a path toward adulthood as she comes to realize that all living things have a purpose on earth. Soon she’s collected an old race horse and Atticus the dog (as well as the puppies) in trying to come to terms with the connection between animals and humans.
As the story unfolds, the people and animals--Belle included--learn that family, love, and life for both people and animals lead us to a better place, perhaps even back home.
The film premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, where it got rave reviews. It has since been screened at special events in Phoenix, Minneapolis and Kansas City (the film location). The entire animal welfare community of each city was invited to see the film, with positive results. At a cross promotion with Safe Harbor Animal Shelter and Tri-County Humane Society during the Palm Beach International Film Festival in Palm Beach, Florida., representatives of the animal welfare community said the film presented a positive message for animals.
To see the coverage from the local ABC affiliate in Palm Beach, click here.
Now the movie will open in a limited release in those same cities plus Salt Lake City, UT on Friday, September 26. A DVD release is scheduled for January 2009.
“Hopefully, ‘All Roads Lead Home’ can do for the animal welfare organizations what ‘Free Willy’ did for Greenpeace and the whale population,” Fallon said in an email to Best Friends Network.
What you can do:
• To see a list of participating theaters in Phoenix, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and Kansas City, click here.
• If you do not live near one of those markets, please send this story to any and all friends, relatives and animal welfare contacts you have in those cities.
• To see the trailer and website, click here.
• To access the press kit, click here.
For more information:
• To learn more about Best Friends’ efforts to stop puppy mills click here.
Images courtesy of Waldo West Productions
Top: poster for film; center: Belle with her rescued horse and dog; bottom: rescued puppy.