lifemark movie review

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• DVD & Streaming
• Biography/History , Christian , Drama

Content Caution

In Theaters

• September 9, 2022
• Raphael Ruggero as David Colton; Kirk Cameron as Jimmy Colton; Rebecca Rogers Nelson as Susan Colton; Dawn Long as Melissa Cates; Alex Kendrick as Shawn Cates; Marissa Hampton as Young Melissa; Lowrey Brown as Brian; Iain Tucker as Young Brian; Stephanie Parker as Azure; Isabelle Almoyan as Reese; Ezra Duvall as Presley; Leah Thompkins as Courtney

Home Release Date

• November 22, 2022
• Kevin Peeples

Distributor

• Fathom Events; Pure Flix

Positive Elements   |   Spiritual Elements   |   Sexual & Romantic Content   |   Violent Content   |   Crude or Profane Language   |   Drug & Alcohol Content   |   Other Noteworthy Elements   | Conclusion

Movie Review

High school senior David Colton is a lot like most kids his age. He loves to wrestle. He’s looking forward to college. And he spends a lot of time goofing off with his best friend, Nate, a budding videographer who films literally everything.

Then again, David’s different. He knows it. Nate knows it. But not many other people are in on his secret. David, you see, is adopted. It’s not something he’s ashamed off. After all, his adoptive parents Jimmy and Susan are about the best a teen could hope for as they love, support and encourage him. Then again, it’s not something he really wants most people to know either.

At David’s 18 th birthday, his mother reminds him that he’s now legally old enough to try to contact his birth mother, a woman named Melissa, if he’d like to do so.

At the very same moment, Melissa is wondering if he might just do that. She’s thought about him every day for 18 years, and she fears that he has no interest in reconnecting. “I don’t think he’d want to talk to me,” she tells her husband, Shawn. “He probably hates me for what I did.”

But Melissa takes a leap of faith anyway to update her contact information at the adoption agency, just in case. And with just a bit of nudging from his adoptive mother, David does indeed get in touch with Melissa.

Ever so slowly, through texts and social media posts, Melissa and the young man she gave up for adoption nearly two decades before begin to get to know each other. One day, David makes his decision: He’s going to meet his birth mother, face to face. And maybe his birth father, a man named Brian who split from Melissa years before and who has been more hesitant to reconnect.

And at every step of the way, Nate will be there to chronicle David and Melissa’s tender story, one that’s based on real-life events.

Positive Elements

Lifemark shines a redemptive light on the process of adoption while striving to show how emotionally difficult various aspects of that decision can be. We watch as tears stream down young Melissa’s face when a nurse takes her baby out of the room. We see David struggle to piece together parts of his identity that have been affected by the fact that his mother chose adoption at birth. With both of these characters, we see their ambivalence: They long to meet this other person who is so important to them, and yet they’re understandably hesitant with regard to how that reunion might go.

Lifemark is based on a true story of a young man meeting his birth mother, one that was chronicled on film in the documentary I Lived on Parker Street . Though there are moments of tension and uncertainty, Lifemark arguably gives us a story of reunion that arguably goes just about as well as it could have. David’s parents are secure in their relationship with him and certain of his love for them. David bears Melissa no ill will for her decision, but rather simply wants to thank her for the choice she made.

Speaking of choices, we also learn late in the film that Melissa was very close to choosing to terminate her teen pregnancy. A flashback shows her on the table at an abortion clinic before she says she heard a voice telling her that there was still time to make another choice. Though she doesn’t attribute that voice directly to God, it seems pretty clear that’s who she was alluding to.

After learning how close he came to never being born, a tearful David repeatedly thanks Melissa for her choice to give him life—something he commemorates with a dog-tag like necklace with his date of birth, a “Lifemark” on a chain for Melissa to wear as a necklace.

To its credit, the film also subtly hints that not all such attempts at reconciliation or reconnection go so smoothly. David’s dad, Brian, eventually says he was hesitant to meet David because his own mother was adopted and hated her birth mother for giving her up. At another point, David talks to a pregnant teen girl about his experience meeting his birth mother. She replies, “I’m not sure it’s always like that.”

I appreciated those realistic acknowledgements that sometimes things don’t go so smoothly in these situations. At the same time, what we see here is a portrait of redemption in which a young girl’s crisis pregnancy, and her decision to give up her child for adoption instead of aborting him, ultimately result in tremendous blessing for everyone his life touches.

Spiritual Elements

David has grown up in a Christian home. References to having faith and trusting God turn up repeatedly—often coming from David’s dad, Jimmy. When David learns that he must have brain surgery, for example, Jimmy encourages his son to remember God’s faithfulness, saying, “God knew this was going to happen.” Afterward, Jimmy adds, “God got you through this. That’s not a little thing. I don’t think we should take that for granted.” He also tells his son, “David, God gave you to me and mom as a gift. And you will always be our son.”

In a speech competition at school before the entire student body, David reciprocates similar sentiments as he talks about being adopted. “We don’t all share the same path. But I’m thankful for the family that God’s given me.”

We see David and his parents praying and reading the Bible together.

Sexual & Romantic Content

There’s no visual sexual content at all here. However, the story obviously turns on Melissa getting pregnant by Brian when she was 18 and he was 17, while they were both still in high school. We see that they have moved in with each other as teens before David is born.

Late in the film, Nate discovers that his own teen sister, Reese, is pregnant and considering abortion. She asks David to talk to her about her situation, and he affirms how happy he is that his own mother chose to give him birth instead of choosing abortion.

Violent Content

There’s not any real violence at all in the film. That said, a flashback scene near the movie’s end shows Melissa on a table in an abortion clinic about to have that procedure before she makes the decision not to go through with it. She—and the camera—glance ominously at the instruments on a nearby table.

Melissa’s trip to the abortion clinic also includes a pro-life protestor whose words she remembers vividly: “Your baby has 10 fingers and 10 toes—please don’t kill it.”

A few scenes involve activities that could be construed as having some physical risk, such as racing four-wheelers down a forest trail, skydiving and teens jumping from a high cliff (perhaps 50 feet or so) into a lake below.

After a high school wrestling tournament, David faints. Shortly thereafter, doctors reveal that David has a congenital condition putting pressure on his brain that will require surgery.

We hear that Jimmy and Susan lost two children from, it seems, a similar genetic condition. We see them visiting the boys’ side-by-side gravesites and putting flowers down for them.

Nate recounts filming a fight that his sister, Reese, had with her boyfriend, in which she threw bricks at his car.

Crude or Profane Language

Drug & alcohol content, other noteworthy elements.

We hear that Nate purchased his drone on credit, and that he still owes $500 on it.

Christian filmmakers Alex and Stephen Kendrick have a history of tackling the toughest issues that families can wrestle with. And with Lifemark , they’ve added another such pair of topics to their cinematic resume: adoption and the pro-life movement.

This inspiring true story gives us a poignant glimpse of what it might feel like to make the courageous decision for adoption—on both sides of that decision—as well as showing us that child later pondering whether he wants to reconnect with the mother who made that choice. The result is a movie that will, as the Kendricks’ films often do, pull a tear or two out of viewers’ eyes even as it deepens our perspective on this complex subject.

Lifemark also shows us that the decision to choose life and to choose a better life for a baby is both a difficult one and a redemptive one. More than once while watching the film, Melissa’s story, especially, prompted an ache in my heart. How hard it must have been for her, yet how beautiful and life-giving the outcome.

As far as content goes, there’s little here visually that warrants a warning—though I can imagine not all parents would want their teen sons jumping off a small cliff into a lake. Still, the subject of abortion is necessarily a difficult one to address, even if graphic imagery is completely avoided. That issue has earned the film its PG-13 rating, and it’s something that parents of younger children will want to consider before seeing it.

That caveat aside, however, Lifemark feels like the kind of story God could use in deep ways in the lives of those who see it. It affirms the beauty of adoption even as it gently encourages those in crisis pregnancies to make the choice for life instead of ending those pregnancies.

Lifemark is being distributed by Fathom Events and currently is scheduled to run seven nights in participating theaters. Ticket information can be found here .

Adam R. Holz

After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.

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• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 5 Reviews
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Common Sense Media Review

Weepy, faith-based adoption story gets heavy-handed.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Lifemark is a faith-based story based on true events about adoption and the impact it has under ideal circumstances for everyone involved. A teenage pregnancy drives the plot. There's a direct message that abortion is murder and a negative, but not gory, depiction of a teen's…

Why Age 10+?

Message that abortion is murder. A negative depiction of a teen's experience at

Married adults embrace and kiss on the face and head. A teen pregnancy drives th

Any Positive Content?

Teen David models empathy and gratitude. He has no anger or resentment toward hi

Adoption is a valuable and beautiful thing. God has a plan for you, and even if

The main cast is all White. Several minor roles and extras are people of color,

Violence & Scariness

Message that abortion is murder. A negative depiction of a teen's experience at an abortion clinic.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Married adults embrace and kiss on the face and head. A teen pregnancy drives the plot.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Role Models

Teen David models empathy and gratitude. He has no anger or resentment toward his birth parents, understands why they placed him for adoption. He's grateful to his birth parents for giving him a better life, to his adoptive parents for loving and providing for him without reservations. All family units are loving and supportive. Best friend Nate is loyal and supportive.

Positive Messages

Adoption is a valuable and beautiful thing. God has a plan for you, and even if you don't understand it, trust that everything will work out for the best.

Diverse Representations

The main cast is all White. Several minor roles and extras are people of color, and throughout the cast different body sizes are seen.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that Lifemark is a faith-based story based on true events about adoption and the impact it has under ideal circumstances for everyone involved. A teenage pregnancy drives the plot. There's a direct message that abortion is murder and a negative, but not gory, depiction of a teen's experience at an abortion clinic. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (5)

Based on 5 parent reviews

GREAT movie. Whole family enjoyed it.

So much good truth, what's the story.

LIFEMARK tells the story of David ( Raphael Ruggero ), a senior in high school who just turned 18. David was adopted as a newborn, and has always known he was adopted but knows nothing about his birth parents. Now that he's 18, his birth mother, Melissa (Dawn Long), reaches out to David, hoping they can meet. David's curiosity wins out, and he agrees to meet Melissa. But what he learns about Melissa's story sends shockwaves through David and all of his loved ones.

Is It Any Good?

For most of its running time, this movie comes across as a sentimental, if emotionally manipulative, story about the beauty of adoption under the most ideal of circumstances. The acting in Lifemark is overall good, and the production quality is very good, too. Most of the script is fine, but there are quite a few unanswered questions and holes in the plot.

The last 15 minutes or so take a hard turn away from looking at adoption to hammer home the point that abortion is murder, and may add to some viewers' feeling emotionally manipulated again. There's no content of concern except the mature topics surrounding teen pregnancy, so it's best for tweens and up who are ready to take on these issues.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about David's character strengths in Lifemark . In what ways does he model empathy , gratitude , and communication ?

Were you adopted, or do you know someone who was? If so, how does this movie compare to real-world experiences? If not, did this movie change what you think about adoption?

Have you seen many other faith-based movies? Which are your favorites? How does this one compare?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : November 22, 2022
• Cast : Raphael Ruggero
• Director : Kevin Peeples
• Studio : Mill Creek Entertainment
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Friendship , Great Boy Role Models
• Run time : 120 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : some thematic material.
• Last updated : January 31, 2024

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What to watch next.

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Cast & Crew

Kevin Peeples

Kirk Cameron

Jimmy Colton

Alex Kendrick

Shawn Cates

Raphael Ruggero

David Colton

Marisa Lynae Hampton

Young Melissa

Melissa Cates

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‘Lifemark’ Is Welcome Testament to the Beauty of Adoption

FILM REVIEW: New pro-life movie starring Kirk Cameron is based on a true story.

In some ways, the new Kendrick Brothers’ film Lifemark can be viewed as a companion piece to PureFlix’s 2019 drama Unplanned . Both are true, pro-life stories. But while Unplanned focuses on Abby Johnson emerging from the sordid world of the abortion industry, Lifemark is a story about life-affirming adoption.

Lifemark is a feature adaptation of the true story of David Scotton, an 18-year-old high-school senior in New Orleans who is contacted by his birth mother, Melissa. The supportive bridge between the meeting of these two are Scotton’s adopted parents, Jimmy (Kirk Cameron) and Susan (Rebecca Rogers). David and Melissa’s story was previously told in I Lived on Parker Avenue , a 2017 short documentary, which includes footage of the live meeting between David and Melissa. Lifemark builds its narrative impact around that meeting, meticulously recreating the actual reunion down to minute details.

Kirk Cameron anchors the cast, reuniting with the Kendrick Brothers for the first time since his firefighter role in Fireproof , the successful drama from 2008 that helped launch the wider Christian film market in the United States. Alex and Stephen Kendrick co-wrote Lifemark with director Kevin Peeples, who previously teamed with the Kendricks on another life-affirming picture, Like Arrows (2018). Fathom Events is distributing Lifemark in theaters for a weeklong run, Sept. 9-15.

Lifemark is a well-meaning effort, earnest in its storytelling; it approaches its subject matter with obvious respect. Because of this sincerity, it is hard to fault its shortcomings. Its style leaves little room for real conflict. In the main, scenes play out perfunctorily. Resolutions easily surface, and characters are quick to avoid discord. We see this particularly in the film’s central character, played by newcomer Raphael Ruggero). When David learns he cannot compete in wrestling due to an operation, he is devastated, but the teenage crisis is temporary. The tone of the film does not allow for deeper character development beyond superficial angst. But these are problems that have long plagued overtly Christian movies of the last two decades, where the message often supersedes the storyline, veering the movies away from a cinematic experience and more into the realm of a public service announcement ( Lifemark ’s credits include a resource page with the phone number to Focus on the Family).

Still, while Lifemark is hampered by budget and production shortcomings, it redeems itself with its positive emphasis on adoption and wholesome mood. In spite of its limitations, Lifemark is a welcome testament to the beauty of adoption.

It also employs an ambitious timeline structure, which shows in flashback how David’s teenage parents, particularly his mother, faced the prospect of bringing a new life into the world. In a flashback reminiscent of Unplanned , Melissa is ushered into an abortion facility, a blanket covering her as she cowers from abortion protesters. Ultimately, Melissa chose life, providing Cameron’s Jimmy and Rogers’ Susan a chance to finally become the parents they long wanted to be. For these flashbacks, “de-aging” technology was employed on Cameron and Rogers. It works for the most part, allowing the performers the rare occasion to show range in playing their characters in different ages. Cameron, a fixture in the faith-based-films milieu, is always a reliable presence on screen and also serves as one of Lifemark ’s executive producers.

A missed opportunity to deepen conflict is in the subplot of the relationship between Melissa and David’s biological father, Brian. When the adult Brian, played by Lowery Brown, admits to his wife he fathered a son as a young adult, Brown brings a gravitas to the role that is sorely needed throughout the rest of the film. As it is conveyed on screen, Brian’s role comes across as an afterthought, and his clear aching over his past actions and behavior remains undeveloped.

Lifemark will likely find a supportive audience within moviegoers seeking affirming, faith-based fare.

LifemarkMovie.com

• kirk cameron
• family-friendly movies

James Day James Day is the Operations Manager at EWTN in Orange County, California

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

David's comfortable world is turned upside down when his birthmother unexpectedly reaches out to him, longing to meet the 18-year-old son she's only held once. David's comfortable world is turned upside down when his birthmother unexpectedly reaches out to him, longing to meet the 18-year-old son she's only held once. David's comfortable world is turned upside down when his birthmother unexpectedly reaches out to him, longing to meet the 18-year-old son she's only held once.

• Kevin Peeples
• Alex Kendrick
• Stephen Kendrick
• Kirk Cameron
• Marisa Lynae Hampton
• 40 User reviews
• 11 Critic reviews

Top cast 25

• Jimmy Colton

• Shawn Cates

• Young Melissa

• Melissa Cates

• Susan Colton

• David Colton

• (as a different name)

• Mr. Russell

• Abortion Clinic Protester

• Pre-op Nurse

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia The adoption lawyer in the scene where Jimmy and Susan meet their new baby is the real David Colton, who is a lawyer in real life.
• Goofs In a flashback to the 1990s, Brian, who lives in Columbus, Indiana, is wearing a Jay Austin Motors shirt. Jay Austin Motors is the car dealership in Flywheel (2003) . However, it is unlikely that Brian would be wearing this shirt since the dealership was founded circa 2001 and is located in Albany, Georgia, according to the aforementioned film.
• Connections Referenced in Spicer & Co.: Episode dated 8 September 2022 (2022)

User reviews 40

• Sep 9, 2022
• How long is Lifemark? Powered by Alexa
• September 9, 2022 (United States)
• United States
• Marca de vida
• Kendrick Brothers
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Sep 11, 2022

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 45 minutes

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"Human Life Has Value"

What You Need To Know:

Miscellaneous Immorality: Nothing objectionable.

More Detail:

LIFEMARK is a faith-based drama about a young man who has always tried to hide the fact he’s adopted, but, when his birth mother reaches out to him, he must decide if he’ll let her into his life. LIFEMARK is a well-made, heartwarming, inspiring movie with a strong Christian worldview promoting reliance on God, believing God’s plan, forgiveness and loving others, with a beautiful pro-life message about adoption and the value of life.

David is a senior in high school who’s going to turn 18 soon. He has an important speech coming up about something that’s impacted his life. Throughout his life, David has kept it secret that he was adopted, but his teacher suggests that would be a good topic if he’s willing to talk about it.

David goes home to find that his birth mother has reached out to him and is interested in meeting him. David wrestles with the idea of meeting his birth mom, but his best friend, Nate, thinks it is a great idea and thinks they should document their meeting.

Deciding to meet his birth mother, David now has heard from his biological father and must decide if he would like to meet him as well. Will David meet his biological mother and father? Will he be able to be open with them and listen to what they have to say about giving him up for adoption?

LIFEMARK is a well-made, heartwarming, inspiring movie produced by the Kendrick Brothers and Kirk Cameron, who also stars. The movie is solid throughout, with a very positive Christian worldview. The movie promotes relying on God, believing God’s plan, forgiveness, and loving others. There’s also a beautiful pro-life message about adoption, giving life and the value of life.

Don’t the PG-13 rating stop you from seeing this movie. The movie’s themes about abortion and pro-life issues are the reason the Hollywood elites are giving the movie such a tough rating. There’s nothing graphic or objectionable in LIFEMARK; it just has heavier themes designed for older children.

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Movie Review: ‘Lifemark’

NEW YORK – A mother and child reunion is more than a motion away in the sensitive fact-based drama “Lifemark” (Fathom). The subtle maneuvering required to bring it about provides much of the slender plot for this gently touching movie.

Realizing that David Colton (Raphael Ruggero), the son she gave up for adoption as an infant, would now be turning 18 – and thus be entitled to decide whether to be in contact with her or not – Melissa Cates (Dawn Long) seeks to reconnect with the lad. But she finds him hesitant to agree.

Principally, that’s because the arrangement has turned out to be a great success and David doesn’t want to put a strain on the close bond he has formed with Susan (Rebecca Rogers Nelson) and Jimmy (Kirk Cameron), the couple who raised him. For different reasons, Brian (Lowrey Brown), David’s biological father, is also cool to the idea of reviving the past.

As Susan allies with Melissa to try to change David’s mind, his classmate and best friend, mildly eccentric aspiring filmmaker Nate (Justin Sterner), is on hand to document his pal’s decision making. Nate’s hit-or-miss wisecracks are designed to serve as comic relief from the sometimes-lachrymose proceedings.

All but those viewers determined to be cynical will bask in the warm glow of director and co-writer Kevin Peeples’ salute to the value of adoption while also taking in its vivid illustration of the deadly toll exacted by one alternative course of action. The presence of that option contributes to making David’s story inappropriate for little kids.

Adolescents, by contrast, may find food for reflection in his tale, which was also recounted in the 2017 documentary short “I Lived on Parker Avenue.” Additionally, “Lifemark” might form the basis for a family discussion on a vital – and, thanks to the recent overturning of the notorious Roe v. Wade decision, very timely – topic.

Look for: Upstanding values and an uplifting tone.

Look out for: Cohabitation and mature themes, including abortion and out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

The Catholic Moviegoer’s guidance is T – suitable for mature teens. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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LIFEMARK Movie Review: The Adoption Story of David Scotton

Are you thinking about going to see the new Christian movie Lifemark starring Kirk Cameron and Raphael Ruggero, and directed by Kevin Peeples and the Kendrick brothers? This pro-life movie follows the adoption story of David Scotton, who goes on a journey to meet his birth parents.

LIFEMARK: The Adoption Story of David Scotton | Catholic Movie Review

To learn more about the movie, check out https://lifemarkmovie.com/

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David’s comfortable world is turned upside down when his birthmother unexpectedly reaches out to him, longing to meet the 18-year-old son she’s only held once.

Dove Review

A young man coming of age is faced with questions about his biological parents in the new film Lifemark , the latest release from the Kendrick Brothers ( War Room, Fireproof, Courageous ). David, the central character, is part of a loving Christian family with supportive friends when he receives a message from his Melissa, who put him up for adoption as a baby. This message and the option to discover more about the woman sets the wheels in motion for a story of self-discovery and possible reconciliation.

Lifemark transposes David’s life with flashbacks of his adoptive parents as young marrieds dealing with the aftermath of a miscarriage and a challenging road of adoption. At the same time, his biological parents’ worlds are rocked with news of an unplanned pregnancy and the decisions they wrestle with over what to do. The closer David gets to the truth about himself, the more is uncovered about how each person’s life was affected by his arrival, and the question remains if he will meet his parents and if so, what will their reaction be?

The Kendricks have leaned on issues of fatherhood in previous films, and while there is a large stream of that here, the main theme is the sanctity of life. In a flashback, Melissa and her boyfriend Brian are at an abortion clinic, ready to terminate the pregnancy when she reconsiders. Because of that last-minute decision, David was raised in a godly home and from all indications is growing into being a man of God. The story celebrates and applauds that decision, while still showing care to the young couple who were put in a difficult situation.

Along with its pro-life theme, the film points to God as the life Giver and the Source of happiness. It is God-honoring and David’s family are devout, church-going Christians. David’s father Jimmy, played by Kirk Cameron, is a rock, even when David’s wrestling career is sidelined early in the story. “God has a plan for you, David,” he reassures him.

Based on a true story, Lifemark is a story that will bring families together and share pro-life, pro-family values in a non-threatening or condemning way. It shows how beautiful and blessed it is when a person makes the choice for life and living for God.

Dove Rating Details

The film is full-on evangelical Christian, giving God credit for life and the good things found in it. The family prays together and encourages each other spiritually.

Many of the characters are already devout Christians, but the ones who are facing challenges come to see the benefits of choosing God’s way.

The plot revolves around the resolution of an unwanted, unplanned teenage pregnancy.

Discussion of abortion, although not in graphic detail.

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Lifemark Parent Guide

The movie's message overpowers its storyline, which makes for pretty poor entertainment..

Theaters. A young man's life is turned upside down when his birth mother unexpectedly reaches out, wanting to meet him.

Release date September 9, 2022

Run Time: 120 minutes

Get Content Details

The guide to our grades, parent movie review by shannon bugg.

Lifemark is a movie with an agenda: to convince viewers of the wonderful, good things that can come from adoption. There’s no denying that adoption has brought joy and fulfillment to countless families, but this production oversimplifies and glorifies the process to the point of phoniness. No matter how worthy the message of a movie, it must be delivered artfully and realistically for it to ring true. Lifemark does neither of those things.

This story centers on a flawless young man named David (Raphael Ruggero) whose life is interrupted when his birth mother Melissa (played as an adult by Dawn Long) sends him a request that they meet. The rest of the film features jumbled and confusing flashbacks of the events leading up to the boy’s adoption, the things David and Melissa went through before meeting, and earnest discussions about adoption.

You don’t have to be a movie critic to spot the missed opportunities for creating a more dramatic film. The fact that the movie begins with the boy’s eighteenth birthday kind of takes the suspense out of whether the teen mother (Marisa Lynae Hampton) decides to give birth or terminate the pregnancy. Early in the movie, David is in a hospital bed, being told he needs surgery and the very next scene shows him and his parents (Kirk Cameron and Rebecca Rogers) bouncing happily into their house, joking about the funny things he did as he came out of anaesthesia. Something of the surgery itself or the parents’ anxiety during the surgery or of the boy recovering from the operation would not have gone amiss. In what I’m assuming is an attempt to sanitize the birth process itself, the teen mother is shown walking into the hospital by herself with a cute little volleyball-sized bump on her tummy, then the film cuts to her holding her perfectly clean and blanketed baby as she tearfully kisses him goodbye and hands him to a nurse. A little of the realities of being an unwed pregnant teenager or the pain of childbirth would have helped the movie’s credibility and made it more interesting.

The film’s low budget was plain to be seen throughout, occasionally providing comic relief not intended in the script. Some giveaways were inadvertently funny, like when a fisherman pulls an extremely dead fish out of the water and holds it up proudly for everyone to admire.

Lifemark idealizes adoption so much that it’s clearly meant for that purpose. During a post-movie extra, Alex and Stephen Kendrick (the executive producers), Kirk Cameron, Sheri Rigby (talent coach), and Roland Warren (President and CEO of Carenet women’s centres), have a chat which includes the entreaty to “Use this movie as a tool to reach others.” There were some touching moments in Lifemark, like a monologue about adoption given by David during a school speech competition, but they are too few and far between to make this movie ring true. It’s trying to hit the mark, but it never really comes to life.

About author

Shannon bugg, watch the trailer for lifemark.

Lifemark Rating & Content Info

Why is Lifemark rated PG-13? Lifemark is rated PG-13 by the MPAA for some thematic material.

Violence: Protestors outside an abortion yell at a pregnant teen: the protestors are seen as heroic. A teenager’s boyfriend loses his temper when she tells him she wants to carry her baby to term instead of having an abortion. Sexual Content: Unwed sexual activity is implied in two pregnancies but no sex is shown on screen. Profanity:   None noted. Alcohol / Drug Use: None noted.

Page last updated January 12, 2024

Lifemark Parents' Guide

What are your views on abortion? Do you think it should always be legal? Always illegal? Legal in some circumstances? Why do you have these beliefs about abortion?  Have you ever had a discussion with someone who has different opinions? What did you learn from them?

Has adoption ever touched your life? Do you have friends or relatives who are adopted? What do you see as the pros and cons of adoption?

Related home video titles:

Other pro-life films include Unplanned and October Baby. The first is based on the experience of a Planned Parenthood manager who later became a pro-life advocate. The second tells the tale of a young woman who survived an attempted abortion and set out to find her birth mother.

A pregnant teenager decides to give her baby up for adoption in Juno. Although this movie features an adoption, it is not written as a pro-life film.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always takes a different perspective, following the experience of a teenager who chooses to abort a pregnancy.

A pregnant teenager gives birth to her child in a WalMart and then raises him alone in Where the Heart Is. Another teenager makes the same decision in Riding in Cars with Boys.

In Look Both Ways , a pregnancy test is a defining experience for a young woman. As her life splits along two tracks, she has a child in one and follows her career in another.

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4 Things You Should Know about Lifemark , the Kendricks' Uplifting Movie about Adoption

• Michael Foust Crosswalk Headlines Contributor
• Updated Aug 26, 2022

David is an 18-year-old high school senior who is enjoying his final year of carefree living before he ventures out into the real world.

He's hanging out with friends. He's thinking about the future. He's also enjoying his favorite sport: wrestling, with an eye toward a college scholarship.

"I heard that there's scouts coming," he says of the upcoming wrestling championships.

David's senior season – it seems – is going just as he planned.

But then things went awry.

First, he passes out during a wrestling meet. And then he learns he has a medical condition that will end his wrestling career.

That news, though, is eclipsed by even more earth-shattering news: His birth mom wants to meet him face to face. This heroic woman (Melissa) gave birth to David 18 years ago and chose Jimmy and Susan – the only parents David has known -- to raise him.

It's something David has spent his teen years trying not to think about.

"I just put it out of my mind," he says.

At first, he ignores the thought. Soon, though – with the support of his adoptive parents – his heart begins to change. And soon, he is driving to another state to meet the birth mom he's never seen.

How will it go?

The new film Lifemark (PG-13) tells the story of David's journey of discovery to learn more about his past. It's the latest film by Alex and Stephen Kenrick and stars Kirk Cameron as the adoptive father and Raphael Ruggero in the lead role of David.

Photo courtesy: ©Fathom , used with permission.

1. It Captures the Emotions of Adoption

Lifemark perfectly encapsulates the emotions of the adoption process – the uncertainty, the grief, the numbness, the relief and the utter joy. We watch as the birth parents – teenagers – process the shock of a surprise pregnancy. We see them sort through dozens of prospective parent profiles before landing on one that grabs their attention. (The prospective parents enjoy camping and fishing – a semi-requirement for the birth mom.) Meanwhile, we experience the sentiments of the adoptive parents: the ambivalence toward adoption following the tragic death of two young children ("I can't go through another loss") and the excitement upon learning they were chosen by Melissa to be the parents of a newborn.

You feel empathy for both sides – the birth parents and the adoptive parents – as you cheer for David to have success in life. (During a series of flashbacks, we watch him age from a newborn to a toddler to a young child.)

Like every other Kendrick movie you've seen, Lifemark has plenty of scenes that will bring tears to your eyes. One of the best ones involves David giving a speech on adoption in front of a large audience ("I'm thankful for the family that God's given me") at the exact same time his birth mom – hundreds of miles away – looks at pictures of him, marveling at the outstanding man he has become.

The film is inspired by a true-life story and documentary,  I Lived on Parker Avenue .

Photo courtesy: ©Fathom, used with permission.

2. It Was Rejected by Hollywood Studios

Lifemark producers Alex and Stephen Kendrick have enjoyed plenty of box-office success in recent years. War Room (2015) was the No. 1 movie in America on its second weekend of release. Overcomer (2019), Courageous (2011) and Fireproof (2008) all opened in the Top 4.

Even so, Hollywood studios refused to distribute Lifemark due to its pro-life theme, Alex Kendrick says. In the film's final moments, we learn that Melissa nearly opted for abortion over adoption. In one poignant scene, she takes David to the site of the former abortion clinic. (We see nothing that is graphic.)

"Several of the studios that have courted us in the past and [have] wanted us to go with them as distributors, they all turned down this film," Kendrick told Crosswalk. "They said we're not releasing this one, because we're scared of the response."

The Kendricks chose not to change the film.

Lifemark  is being released by Fathom, a company that's run by theater chains AMC, Regal Cinemas (Cineworld) and Cinemark.

It will be in theaters for one week beginning Sept. 9.

3. It Uses Flashbacks and De-Aging Technology

The timeline of Lifemark – nearly two decades – presented plenty of challenges to the Kendricks. Do you choose two sets of actors, one for the "young" scenes and one for the "old" ones? Or, alternatively, do you use computer technology to transform the actors' on-screen appearance?

Lifemark employed both options. For the birth parents, two sets of actors and actresses were chosen. But for the adoptive parents – played by Kirk Cameron and Rebecca Rogers – the filmmakers used so-called de-aging technology.

"People are de-aged 20 years," Stephen Kendrick told Crosswalk.

The on-screen product is impressive. Kirk Cameron looks like a 50-year-old and a (roughly) 30-year-old – all in the same film.

Lifemark also relies on flashbacks to tell David's story.

In the film's opening scene, you watch a nearly 18-year-old David laugh and play with friends as they jump into a lake. Soon, though, you're learning about his past.

4. It's the First Kendrick Movie without a Kendrick Director

For their first six movies – beginning with Fly Wheel (2003) and continuing through to Overcomer  (2019) – Alex Kendrick served as director. For Lifemark,  though, the Kendricks chose a different director: Kevin Peeples ( Like Arrows ).

Alex and Stephen Kendricks (along with their brother, Shannon) are executive producers.

Their goal in choosing Peeples, they said, is to help raise up a new generation of Christian filmmakers.

"We're big believers in pouring into the next generation," Stephen Kendrick said. "We've been saying since 2013 – when our church prayed over us and launched us out [to form a new company] – that we wanted to intentionally invest into the next generation of Christian filmmakers."

The Kendricks participate in the Christian Worldview Film Festival, an annual gathering designed to boost the next generation of faith -based filmmakers. They also have on-set mentorships.

"Kevin has helped us behind the scenes on War Room and Overcomer ," Stephen Kendricks said. "Alex basically shifted from being the quarterback of the field to being the coach on the sidelines. We're cheering on these [new] guys, but we're still heavily involved."

It's one of the best pro-life movies ever made.

The movie is already impacting audiences. During a test screening, a 32-year-old man walked up to Alex Kendrick and said with tears in his eyes, "I'm going home now to tell my wife, 'Let's adopt.'"

Stephen Kendrick said he's praying that the "Holy Spirit grabs the hearts of people who watch it" to consider adoption, to reach out to women who are in an unwanted pregnancy, and perhaps even to launch a pregnancy center and/or adoption ministry in their church.

"The church needs to rise up," he said.

Lifemark is rated PG-13 for some thematic material. It contains no coarse language, sexuality or violence.

Entertainment rating : 4 out of 5 stars

Family-friendly rating : 5 out of 5 stars

Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.

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About the movie:

David’s comfortable world is turned upside down when his birthmother unexpectedly reaches out to him, longing to meet the 18-year-old son she’s only held once. With the encouragement of his adoptive parents, David embarks on a journey of discovery that leads to a staggering truth from his past. From executive producers Kirk Cameron and the Kendrick Brothers—creators of War Room and Fireproof—comes LIFEMARK, inspired by an incredible true story that celebrates the gift of life.

true inspiring adoption stories!

These true-life stories will inspire you and fill you with joy, and perhaps, even encourage you to become involved in the adoption process. Find your place in a child’s story!

Free adoption guide

Ready to learn more? Below is a link to a free resource that answers the most asked questions about the adoption and foster care process.

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Ready to take your next step? Check out our partner page and find a Christian adoption care network that can meet your needs or take your church or youth group to see the movie!

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only in theaters beginning September 9

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Lifemark (PG-13, 105 min.)

Directed by: Kevin Peeples

Written by: Alex Kendrick, Stephen Kendrick, Kevin Peeples

Stars: Kirk Cameron, Alex Kendrick, Marisa Lynae Hampton, Larrs Jackson, Lowrey Brown

David’s comfortable world is turned upside down when his birthmother unexpectedly reaches out to him, longing to meet the 18-year-old son she’s only held once. With the encouragement of his adoptive parents, David embarks on a journey of discovery that leads to a staggering truth from his past.

From executive producers Kirk Cameron and the Kendrick Brothers—creators of War Room and Fireproof—comes LIFEMARK, inspired by an incredible true story that celebrates the gift of life.

“I’m so excited about the release of LIFEMARK , an incredibly inspiring film that highlights the beauty of adoption and the heroic sacrifice of women who make this agonizing choice in order to give life to their babies . The Kendrick Brothers, Kirk Cameron, and Fathom Events have collaborated to produce a truly moving story that encourages all of us to remember God has a loving plan for each and every life He knits together in the womb.” - JIM DALY, PRESIDENT, FOCUS ON THE FAMILY

“ LIFEMARK movie is an incredible true story about a couple who chose life and adopted a child. That child went on to do great things and even reconciled with birth mother and father later in life. This film will touch your heart, marriage, family, and faith. Take a group to see this! ” - DR. GARY CHAPMAN, AUTHOR, THE 5 LOVE LANGUAGES

"I love that LIFEMARK shines a light on the wonders of adoption." - DELILAH, NATIONALLY SYNDICATED RADIO HOST

" The movie is terrific; I felt each moment of the story. I prayed throughout the movie that it will inspire the beginning of thousands of new families." -

KATHY BRANZELL, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER

" This is not your typical Christian movie. Being an adoptive father of an incredible 31-year-old daughter, LIFEMARK is a must-see movie. This true story of a young man’s journey to discover where he came from and the difference one choice can make on many lives is beyond impactful. If you are like me, you will cry happy tears." - STEVE ARTERBURN, BESTSELLING AUTHOR

“ LIFEMARK is a movie that will grip your heart with the truth that every life matters to God and should matter to us. This real-life drama will keep you on the edge of your seat with unexpected twists and turns while demonstrating that God cares about every detail in each of our lives while He’s writing a story that only He can write. You’ll get a front-row seat to seeing how God showed up for these families … which illustrates that He’s invested in your life story too.” - MICHELLE WATSON CANFIELD, PHD, LPC, AUTHOR, LET’S TALK: CONVERSATION STARTERS FOR DADS AND DAUGHTERS PODCAST HOST, “THE DAD WHISPERER”

“ This movie will make you laugh, cry, and think! LIFEMARK didn’t shy away from the hard parts of adoption. For many years there has been negative stigma around adoption, but LIFEMARK shows the beauty, sorrow, and redemption that can happen through a brave, selfless decision. Well done!”- ROBYN CHAMBERS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FOCUS ON THE FAMILY

“ This film puts God on display by shining a bright light on the choice of sacrifice and unconditional love.”- KEN WINDEBANK, COO, FOCUS ON THE FAMILY

“ The new Kendrick Brothers movie LIFEMARK hits the mark in bringing answers and practical steps to doing just that, while driving home the truth that EVERY LIFE COUNTS and ultimately doing what is best for the child is most important, regardless of past difficulties, mistakes, or regrets!”- DR. BOB RECCORD, NATIONAL SPEAKER AND AUTHOR

“ LIFEMARK is a moving and true story revealing the challenges which adoptive families face. It clearly gives dignity to an adoptive person’s life story and affirms the vision for families to adopt children. Our current culture has overlooked the connection between the value of life and the amazing miracles it brings to adoptive households. Not every adoptive story is as sweet and positive as this, but LIFEMARK provides a benchmark for which we all should strive.”- KEN CANFIELD, PHD, FOUNDER, NATIONAL CENTER FOR FATHERING, AND GRANDKIDS MATTER

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• “I’m so excited about the release of LIFEMARK, an incredibly inspiring film that highlights the beauty of adoption and the heroic sacrifice of women who make this agonizing choice in order to give life to their babies. The Kendrick Brothers, Kirk Cameron, and Fathom Events have collaborated to produce a truly moving story that encourages all of us to remember God has a loving plan for each and every life He knits together in the womb.” - JIM DALY, PRESIDENT, FOCUS ON THE FAMILY
• “LIFEMARK movie is an incredible true story about a couple who chose life and adopted a child. That child went on to do great things and even reconciled with birth mother and father later in life. This film will touch your heart, marriage, family, and faith. Take a group to see this!” - DR. GARY CHAPMAN, AUTHOR, THE 5 LOVE LANGUAGES
• "I love that LIFEMARK shines a light on the wonders of adoption." - DELILAH, NATIONALLY SYNDICATED RADIO HOST
• "The movie is terrific; I felt each moment of the story. I prayed throughout the movie that it will inspire the beginning of thousands of new families." -
• “LIFEMARK is a movie that will grip your heart with the truth that every life matters to God and should matter to us. This real-life drama will keep you on the edge of your seat with unexpected twists and turns while demonstrating that God cares about every detail in each of our lives while He’s writing a story that only He can write. You’ll get a front-row seat to seeing how God showed up for these families … which illustrates that He’s invested in your life story too.” - MICHELLE WATSON CANFIELD, PHD, LPC
• “This movie will make you laugh, cry, and think! LIFEMARK didn’t shy away from the hard parts of adoption. For many years there has been negative stigma around adoption, but LIFEMARK shows the beauty, sorrow, and redemption that can happen through a brave, selfless decision. Well done!”- ROBYN CHAMBERS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FOCUS ON THE FAMILY
• “This film puts God on display by shining a bright light on the choice of sacrifice and unconditional love.”- KEN WINDEBANK, COO, FOCUS ON THE FAMILY
• “The new Kendrick Brothers movie LIFEMARK hits the mark in bringing answers and practical steps to doing just that, while driving home the truth that EVERY LIFE COUNTS and ultimately doing what is best for the child is most important, regardless of past difficulties, mistakes, or regrets!”- DR. BOB RECCORD, NATIONAL SPEAKER AND AUTHOR
• “LIFEMARK is a moving and true story revealing the challenges which adoptive families face. It clearly gives dignity to an adoptive person’s life story and affirms the vision for families to adopt children. Our current culture has overlooked the connection between the value of life and the amazing miracles it brings to adoptive households. Not every adoptive story is as sweet and positive as this, but LIFEMARK provides a benchmark for which we all should strive.”- KEN CANFIELD, PHD, FOUNDER, NATIONAL CENTER

Dove Approved 12+

Product details

• MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ PG-13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned)
• Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.52 x 5.28 x 0.67 inches; 2.72 ounces
• Director ‏ : ‎ Kevin Peeples
• Media Format ‏ : ‎ NTSC
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 45 minutes
• Release date ‏ : ‎ December 13, 2022
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Kirk Cameron, Alex Kendrick, Rebecca Rogers, Dawn Long, Justin Sterner
• Studio ‏ : ‎ Lifemark
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BG6DR45C
• Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ USA
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
• #11 in Faith & Spirituality (Movies & TV)
• #332 in Kids & Family DVDs
• #514 in Drama DVDs

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For Love & Life: No Ordinary Campaign

Do you remember the viral ice bucket challenge in the summer of 2014? The challenge videos of people getting ice water dumped on their heads were viewed 10 billion times and raised over $100 million.  

Here’s a harder question: Do you remember what the money was for? Most people do not. But, like this movie, the ice bucket challenge was one step toward finding some hope in an “unforgiving and relentless” disease.

The seven most terrifying words anyone can hear from a doctor are, “Have you ever heard of Lou Gehrig?” No healthcare provider wants to talk to you about the scoring record of the New York Yankee known as “The Iron Horse.” They want to prepare you for a diagnosis of ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. It is 100 percent fatal, usually within 2-5 years of failing systems that affect every aspect of motion, including speaking and breathing. 

As a doctor says in the documentary “For Life and Love: No Ordinary Campaign,” even in the case of the other most devastating diagnoses, there is still a chance to delay or reduce the effects of the disease. If pancreatic cancer has a one percent survival rate, that is still enough to give patients and their families a sliver of hope. That is not the case with ALS, or at least it has not been the case until Brian Wallach , whose doctor asked him about Gehrig when he was just 37, then said, “We can’t help you. Go home and live your life, travel, eat whatever you want, and get your affairs in order.” Wallach got the diagnosis just as his wife and second baby were coming home from the hospital. 

The film is produced by Katie Couric and “Everybody Loves Raymond” showrunner Phil Rosenthal, and it has the rhythms of an extended but very professional news segment. Wallach and his wife, Sandra Abrevaya, are immensely appealing, attractive, devoted, optimistic, and dedicated. One patient doing better than anyone who has ever had the disease acknowledges that if he saw that happen to someone else, he would be envious. But, he tells us, Wallach “holds those victories up like they’re his own.” We meet other people with ALS and their families, and families who lost parents to the disease, as well as doctors, elected officials, and a few familiar faces. The film carefully balances the most painful moments with glimmers of progress and hope and makes a powerful argument for looking at struggles so easily ignored.

Wallach, described by a family member as “exhaustingly exuberant” and “always in 5 th  gear,” is a lawyer who spent most of his career working for the public interest. This included time as an assistant US Attorney, stints in Barack Obama ’s Presidential campaign, where he met his Abrevaya, and in the office of the White House counsel. And so, his response to the devastating news was to see possibilities. 

What frustrated him most was the invisibility of ALS patients. He talks about the problems people do not want to notice until they are confronted with them: poverty, racism, and the failures of the healthcare system. Even within the system, ALS has been dismissed as hopeless. Wallach envisioned a way to put people with ALS and their caregivers and families in the center of a patient-focused project to think of it as only temporarily hopeless. That begins with being not just visible but unignorable. His goals are to get funding, visibility, and access to medication and disability funding for people with ALS.

The movie opens with Wallach joyously racing into Lake Michigan. Then, we see him a few years later on the same beach, using a walker. The movie does not let us look away from the ravages of the disease, but his dedication to improving the lives and prospects of people with ALS brims with generosity and optimism. By working with others, those with ALS, and their families, he can get Congress to double the funding for research and then double it again, resulting in the first-ever breakthrough, the discovery of a gene connected to one form of the disease. As one of the doctors explains, anything we learn about nerves helps us understand all nerve-related diseases, including Parkinson’s and Huntington’s. 

Former football star Steve Gleason , whose own documentary about his ALS experience is called “ Gleason ,” vowed to advocate but never testify before Congress or promote legislation. Wallach persuades him. Legendary Washington DC lobbyist Dan Tate, also diagnosed with ALS, turned Wallach down more than once. But then, in one of the film’s tenderest moments, Tate says he agreed to help Wallach because he wanted his children to see him fight. Wallach works to speed up Social Security disability payments and give people with ALS access to promising experimental medication. 

The best anyone hopes for now is a sort of relay race of drugs that will keep people with ALS alive long enough to get to better ones. Some day, some very smart people will find a way to make the disease chronic or even find a cure or a way to prevent it. And that will be because of Wallach and Abrevaya, and the people they brought together. 

On Prime now.

Nell Minow is the Contributing Editor at RogerEbert.com.

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Critic’s Pick

‘The Remarkable Life of Ibelin’ Review: More Real Than Reality

An unconventional documentary tells the story of a Norwegian gamer — and of how we live life on the internet.

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By Alissa Wilkinson

Almost from the start, the internet scrambled our sense of reality. You could never really know if whoever you were talking to was the person they said they were. Now it’s hard to know if they’re even a person.

This is destabilizing and frightening, and also the premise for a good movie. But there has to be more to the story than just the scary parts. No, we don’t exist physically on the internet, but our virtual selves do things that have real-world consequences, and our emotions and minds, in some phenomenological way, extend into cyberspace, too. For better or worse, the internet is a place in which we live and love and rage and mourn. We bring our humanity with us, the bad parts but also the good ones.

Movies haven’t always captured this aspect of 21st-century life well, in part because rendering the internet visually is weird and tricky. I loved Joe Hunting’s 2022 documentary “We Met in Virtual Reality,” filmed entirely inside a V.R. platform, for how it captured love and generosity in virtual space. And now we have Benjamin Ree’s “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin,” which is a rare and beautiful thing: a moving documentary that excavates the question of the “real” in a profoundly humanistic and unconventional way.

“The Remarkable Life of Ibelin” is about Mats Steen, a Norwegian man who died in 2014 at the age of 25. Mats lived out his final years nearly immobilized, the result of being born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare inherited disease which presently has no cure. Mats’s family knew him as smart and loving, but grieved while watching him grow more withdrawn as his symptoms progressed. He would spend most of his waking hours on his computer, playing games. “Our deepest regret was that he would never experience friends, love, or make a difference in other people’s lives,” his father, Robert, tells Ree.

Mats’s family were loving, attentive and supportive of him to the very end. But they were wrong about the friends and making a difference part. Oh, were they wrong.

Mats left behind something for his family to find: the password to his blog. Robert and Trude, Mats’s mother, logged in to leave a note for any readers about his passing. What happened shocked them: They began to receive emails from people all over Europe, an outpouring of love and tribute to Mats, whom everyone called “Ibelin.” They were, as Trude puts it, dumbfounded by the response. “Who are these people?” she recalls asking in the film. “Are they crazy, or what?”

They weren’t crazy at all. They were players in World of Warcraft, members of the same guild — or “community of friends,” as one participant puts it — which called itself Starlight. Mats played as a burly, friendly man he called Ibelin. It was role-playing. But it was more.

Ree tells the story of Mats’s early life in a conventional documentary way: His parents talk about their son, and home video footage of his life from infancy to his final years gives us the picture. We see Mats initially walking as a child, then slowly losing full use of his body.

But then, the tape of Mats’s life rewinds and begins to roll again. Nobody around Mats knew what his existence in World of Warcraft was like, and probably if they had, they wouldn’t have understood it. Ree’s aim is to dig beneath reality to build out Mats’s bigger story. Ree’s previous documentary, “The Painter and The Thief,” worked in several points of view to expand a complex story, in that case of a painter who befriends the man who stole her paintings from a gallery. Here, the viewpoints are like brushstrokes that fill in a portrait of Mats as Ibelin.

But of course, World of Warcraft is not the sort of place you can just drop into with your camera. Instead, Ree took an unusual approach. The World of Warcraft guild to which Mats belonged, which called itself Starlight, had saved logs of everyone’s text-based interactions — 42,000 pages of logs, in fact, which included conversations and character descriptions written by Mats and his friends in the course of playing the game.

Using the gargantuan archive, animators reconstructed events that occurred inside the game, basing the characters on the look of the game itself. Actors read the dialogue. An actor who, we’re told, sounds a lot like Mats also reads from his blog, filling in Mats’s thoughts and feelings as he lives his Ibelin life. It makes for a different kind of reconstruction than we’re used to in contemporary documentary.

The emotional power of “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin” comes from the way the film brings together the virtual and the physical. We don’t spend the whole time in World of Warcraft; instead, the film’s focus is the way that Mats, as Ibelin, was involved in other players’ lives. A significant friend is Lisette, who lives in the Netherlands and met Mats in the game when they were both teenagers. Another is Xenia-Anni, a Danish mother who struggled to connect with her son Mikkel, in part because of his autism, until they met Mats in the game.

All of these people and many others tell Ree that they received wise advice from Ibelin that changed their lives. They built real friendships and had real fights and worried about one another. Interviews (conducted in real life) are woven into the animated storytelling, and we start to get a picture of Mats as a man for whom gaming wasn’t a distraction, but a life, a place where he could express all the complex parts of his personality that the physical world couldn’t accommodate. On his blog, he wrote as much, calling the game “a gateway to whatever your heart desires” and describing Ibelin’s characteristics as “expansions of myself.”

Crafting a documentary like this one is tricky. Keeping it from becoming too precious or maudlin is vital, helped along by Ree’s excellent sense of rhythm: We go back and forth from the virtual to the physical, and start to see the outline of Mats’s life filling in as cohesive, rather than what’s real and what’s not.

But it’s also tricky because documentary audiences are often accustomed to seeing only what is real. That’s a fiction, of course; just filming and editing raw video footage together requires selection and framing, which by nature leaves something out in service to the story the filmmaker wants to tell. Here, though, Ree establishes trust by clearly spelling out to the audience what they’re about to see and how it was created, whether it’s the voice-over from Mats’s blog or the in-world scenes. That kind of explanation pulls down barriers that skeptical audiences might otherwise erect and lets us live in the world of the film.

And in the end it’s all in service to a bigger truth, both about Mats’s life and about our own. In these still early days of whatever the internet will become, we tend to draw bright lines between one world and the other, between who we are online and who we are in real life. But the truth is that whoever we are in one space spills into the other. The discovery of Mats’s remarkable life as Ibelin had a profound effect on those who saw one man in a wheelchair, and only later knew the whole story.

The Remarkable Life of Ibelin Rated PG-13. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Watch on Netflix.

Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson

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