EXCLUSIVE: In the new documentary Heathens, five strangers meet at a retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains, each of them harboring a secret: they have eschewed their religious backgrounds, putting them at odds potentially with their families, communities, and Christian churches.

The documentary directed and produced by David Cowan and Shawn Hardin holds its world premiere on Saturday, October 24 at the United Nations Association Film Festival (UNAFF) in the San Francisco Bay area. From there, it screens at the University of Southern California on Oct. 27, and begins a theatrical run in Los Angeles (at Laemmle NoHo) on Oct. 30. Screenings are also planned in San Francisco on Nov. 6 with U.S. Congressman Jared Huffman (D-Cal.), and on Nov. 15 at the Center for Inquiry Los Angeles.

We have your exclusive first look at the film in the trailer above.

The five protagonists in Heathens are engaged in what can be called a coming out process – they are non-believers “seeking respite from the guilt, shame, fear, and loneliness of hiding who they are,” according to the UNAFF program. “Each has quietly rejected the religion that raised them, now fearing the cost of honesty: family, security, livelihood. They are not alone. Over 80 million American adults hide their religious disbelief or exaggerate their faith. By the end of the weekend, the five non-believers resolve to reclaim their lives, forging a friendship that carries them through the storms awaiting them back home. In this warm, funny, and unexpectedly joyful story, they rebuild community, inspired by the gospel music of home, reclaiming the slur ‘heathen’ as a proud new identity. For the first time in their lives, five Heathens discover who they truly are.”

The United States, of course, was founded on the principle of religious freedom, a right guaranteed in the First Amendment, which reads in part, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Courts have interpreted that to mean Americans are not required to believe in God or profess any faith. But it’s one thing for courts to affirm that and another for individuals to negotiate their lack of faith or loss of faith within the strictures of family, society, and church.

The largest religious denomination in the U.S. is now “none,” according to support materials for the film: “The religious ‘Nones’ in America are now 84 million strong and growing. Tens of millions identify as atheists, agnostics, skeptics and secular opponents of religion.”

“At a moment when Christian nationalism wields increasing power in American public life, Heathens asks what happens when a politicized faith treats non-believers as enemies in a culture war and as traitors to their families, churches and nation,” notes a synopsis. “The film moves from private closets to the Charlottesville rally to January 6 and back to a family kitchen, dramatizing where a culture of religious conformity can lead, and what it costs a society when people believe they have no real choice but to conform.

“Warm, funny and unexpectedly hopeful, Heathens is ultimately about what becomes possible when people decide they do have a choice: the losses that can come with telling the truth, the freedom that can follow, the discovery of a path forward, and the realization that you are not alone.”

Rebecca Cammisa, a two-time Oscar nominee for God Is the Bigger Elvis and Which Way Home, serves as executive producer of Heathens, alongside Brad Feld and Amy Batchelor. Director-producer David Cowan (Heist, Afghan Dreamers) is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker and science philanthropist who serves on the boards of the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Center for Inquiry. Director-producer Shawn Hardin is a filmmaker and former Television Academy governor. He co-founded the Producers Guild of America’s New Media Council and later founded OnlySky, serving America’s religiously unaffiliated.

Watch the trailer for Heathens above. You will notice it contains footage of the infamous Unite the Right white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville, VA in 2017. That’s not a coincidence – that march unfolded within a 15-minute drive from the Blue Ridge Mountain camp that hosts people seeking to find community with other non-believers. The Unite the Right rally was constructed around a racist and exclusionary ideology that defines “real Americans” as white and Christian.

Israel’s official Oscar submission, Moshe Rosenthal’s Tell Me Everything, has been dropped by the queer-themed Everybody’s Perfect film festival in Switzerland after receiving boycott and protest calls and threats.

“The Geneva Everybody’s Perfect film festival is a place to convene, dedicated to human rights and queer expression around the world. Art and cinema can do just that,” the festival’s artistic director Sylvie Cachin said in a statement. “The world is particularly polarized and this festival is trying to unite people and raise awareness about LGBTIQ+ issues… Love not hate.”

Rosenthal’s film, titled Independence in Hebrew, premiered at Sundance and won the top best picture award at Israel’s Ophir Awards, automatically making it the country’s Academy Awards entry. Charlotte Sector, communications chief for Everybody’s Perfect, told The Hollywood Reporter that director and screenwriter Rosenthal’s movie had been “deprogrammed” after emails with boycott threats had been received from a rival Geneva-based festival, Palestine, Filmer C’est Exister and other groups.

“This is very difficult. It’s difficult because we’re not Sundance, right? We don’t have lawyers. We don’t have that amazing backstop that we would love to have,” Sector explained. The Geneva-based festival canceled two screenings of Tell Me Everything set for Oct. 13 and 17.

The Israeli film, set in 1987, centers on a 12-year-old boy, Boaz, played by Yair Mazor, who, while preparing for his bar mitzvah, is shocked to witness his father (Assi Cohen) having sex in a swimming pool locker room. Boaz’s family life is upturned just as the AIDs epidemic takes hold. But a decade later, the father and his older son, now played by Ido Tako, attempt to reconcile and accept one another.

The film’s cast includes Keren Tzur, Neta Orbach and Mor Demari. Sector said the festival’s programmers dropped Tell Me Everything with “great regret” after running into a buzzsaw of media attention and political polarization around Israel and Palestine.

“Everyone is just very emotional about this. We, the festival, are trying to promote love. And there’s so much backlash against human rights, backlash against gay LGBTIQ rights and it’s coming from everywhere,” she explained. Sector added the film festival had received “hate messages” from progressive groups claiming Everybody’s Perfect had made the wrong decision in canceling a queer-themed Israeli film.

“The boycott might go the other way,” she warned of a film festival caught in political crossfire one day before the event kicks off on Oct. 9. “This film festival is trying to show something in between, and now we are in a situation where we’re displeasing the right, the left, the center, everything,” Sector said with frustration.

And that’s from what she sees as an artistic film that was to have been included the festival’s 13^th edition, with 73 films scheduled to screen until Oct. 18. “The film, it’s art. It’s cinema. This film is about the ‘80s, HIV, AIDs. It’s about not accessing treatment. This is an artistic expression, and now politics has got involved and it’s sad,” Sector insisted.

Boycott calls and protests against Israeli films, funding institutions and producers are not new. In August 2026, the Locarno film festival saw an outdoor protest where around 100 people unwound a shroud to mark Palestinians killed as part of Israel’s war in Gaza and also on the West Bank in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack on southern Israel.

And a month later in September, Hollywood celebrities were part of the Film Workers for Palestine organization making a boycott pledge backed by signatures of more than 1,300 filmmakers, actors, creatives and other industry professionals including Olivia Colman, Ayo Edebiri, Mark Ruffalo, Riz Ahmed, Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem, Yorgos Lanthimos, Josh O’Connor, Emma Stone, Ava DuVernay, Asif Kapadia, Emma Seligman, Boots Riley, Hannah Einbinder, Cynthia Nixon, Adam McKay, Joshua Oppenheimer and others.

Israeli directors, the Israeli Producers Association and other players in the film industry in Israel have countered that cultural boycotts against Israeli filmmakers are counterproductive as they should be considered among those attempting to bring peace to the region.

Representatives for Rosenthal and his Tell Me Everything film could not be reached for comment.