Religion no longer plays the outsized role in the lives of many Canadians in the way it has in the past, yet stories of people completely leaving religious communities are few and far between.

The struggle to square the circle that is having lost faith but also not wanting to lose one’s friends or even family can be a hard one for people looking to deconvert.

Calgary filmmaker Elyse Bouvier’s new film Unfolding Faith will examine what it means to live without religion with a world premiere at the Calgary International Film Festival.

The highly personal story, which chronicles Bouvier’s own deconversion, doesn’t aim to denigrate any particular faith or belief but nevertheless challenges viewers to consider what religion means in their lives.

“It’s not a light film. It’s something that is maybe a little bit more taboo in some ways to talk about… though, the approach that I have is very soft,” she said.

“This isn’t a film that’s about trying to point fingers in a particular way, or even say religion is bad or good, but just to point towards the personal relationships that we each have to our beliefs and to each other.”

Unfolding Faith is also a uniquely Albertan film, which dives into the faith of rural Alberta—especially in Vulcan County.

“I think it really started with my dad, as he went from being a Pentecostal pastor when I was a kid to now an atheist. He works with a local life without religion group as well as other people who have come together, who deconverted,” said Bouvier.

“It was really was looking at his story and finding it really interesting, and thinking about my own deconversion story. I was like, ‘where do I see this kind of story?”

She said that turn from fundamentalist religion was a very personal conversation with people around her, including her father and her mother, who remained in the faith.

“The thing about deconversion to me really, is that it really shifts your identity and your worldview and your perspective. I think when people see the film and they see these conversations happening, and how hard it is on your relationships and your family, I want people to maybe have a little bit of a different understanding about folks who may have come out of fundamentalist religion,” said Bouvier.

“Maybe a bit more like empathy for those conversations, but also I think the empathy for the people who stay… I think it’s just wanting to spark the conversations among people about, what does that look like? How can we bridge those gaps a little bit, have some of those conversations, and think a little bit differently about what someone’s background might have been if they came out of something like fundamentalist religion.”

Sparking conversation on family and faith

She said that through those conversations, she learned a lot about herself and about her own family—and that message of having the conversation is something that she hopes audiences take away from the film.

“There’s a lot of things I learned about myself over the process of making this film. I definitely learned a lot about each of my parents, things that I didn’t know necessarily even about their upbringing, or how their relationship came together, and then how their separation went from their perspectives,” said Bouvier.

“That was really interesting, because it made me definitely look at my own, you know, my own childhood and my own view of my family in a different way.”

Inspiring viewers to have deep conversations within their own families was something that Bouvier said she hoped would be sparked by CIFF attendees.

“Whether that’s about diverging beliefs that are religious beliefs, or other beliefs. We are in a very polarized time in society,” she said.

“I think that it’s not always possible, depending on where those beliefs fall. It doesn’t mean that every family is able to kind of have these conversations and bridge that divide, but if you can, and just having people maybe ponder that and think about that, and if they can maybe have those conversations with their family and see what comes out of that.”

Unfolding Faith plays as part of the Real and True shorts package at Contemporary Calgary on Sunday, Sept. 21 as part of the Calgary International Film Festival.

The film will also be joining the National Film Board’s online programming in mid-October.