Allen Theatre to premiere faith-centered documentary by local filmmaker Saturday

At 6 p.m. Saturday, May 10, Annubis Productions will premiere This is Why I Believe, a documentary that captures 25 locals’ reasons for believing in God, at the Allen Theatre.

Erik Soulliard, owner of Annubis Productions and director of This is Why I Believe, spoke with LebTown about what inspired the feature-length documentary.

Soulliard was raised in the church, turned 18, and walked away from religion for a time. But he never lost his personal relationship with God, and he and his wife and their children have since returned to church.

“It seems to me to be more of a leap of faith not to believe in God than it’s a leap of faith to look at the world and everything around us and believe in a God,” Soulliard said.

While work was underway on his We Are Lebanon, PA campaign and his Lebanon-based film project entitled Diakonia, Soulliard found himself in a pew at South Lebanon Community Church, listening to then-Senior Pastor Charlie Ilyes ask congregants why they believe in Jesus.

The question struck Soulliard, who was led to learn more about the number of people who believe in God. A 2023 Gallup poll revealed that 47% of Americans consider themselves religious, compared to 54% of Americans when Gallup polled in 1999.

With these dwindling numbers in mind, Soulliard put out feelers about a new project where the sole question to interviewees would be “Why do you believe in God?” rather than the more frequently asked “What is your testimony?”

He was met with immediate interest from a handful of locals and decided to put his other projects on pause in pursuit of the new one.

Soulliard chose to make the documentary talking-head style, meaning he would solely use video footage of the interviewees, rather than the usual mix of main and supplemental footage.

“It was a debate on how to do this because there is ways I could have incorporated B-roll. There’s things I could have done. It was actually a decision to go the way it went,” Soulliard said. “And it is 100-percent possible that this doesn’t work, really, for a lot of people….

“My friend that does documentaries, he looked at me right away when I first started talking about it. He goes, ‘That’s not going to work.’ And I was like, ‘I know, it shouldn’t work, and the standard of anyone that’s doing this is going to tell you it doesn’t work.'”

Taking a risk with the style, he strived to maintain visual interest by shooting interviews in a variety of locations, including his studio in downtown Lebanon and the Lebanon Valley Mall.

Soulliard started out with the idea of interviewing locals from various religions about why they believe and what they believe, but quickly opened it up to whoever was interested in sharing why they believe in God.

Through these interviews, Soulliard mostly encountered Christians, but “in some ways, they’re not Christian stories,” he said. They’re stories of faith in a society where those who consider themselves religious have become the minority.

For the first shoot of the project in 2023, Soulliard interviewed six locals in the rustic area of his studio. He ended up interviewing between 30 and 35 locals, 25 of whom made it into the documentary due to time constraints and other factors. Among those featured is now-retired Senior Pastor Ilyes, a full-circle moment for the project.

“It was amazing that people were willing to share those stories,” Soulliard said. “And I would always say to people, ‘Thank you for trusting me with your story,’ because, you know, these are intensely personal stories 99 percent of the time.”

The documentary also features interviews with theologians and psychologists to contextualize the lived experience described by the other interviewees.

While working on the project, Soulliard promoted it by posting the interviews on social media. “When I started putting them out on social media, they were getting a really great response from people,” he said.

“Early on, a friend of mine, from way back, they messaged me on Facebook, and they were like, ‘Hey, you know how I am about religion.’ And they’re not someone that’s religious. … And they go, ‘But I watch every one of these because I’m just really interested to see, well, why do people believe in God?'”

With the help of his wife and a mostly volunteer skeletal film crew, Soulliard has invested about 200 hours of work into shooting, editing, and promoting the documentary.

Annubis Productions conducted a test screening of the documentary at the Allen Theatre for about 25 viewers, who provided feedback on their viewing experience.

Soulliard said that the feedback was mostly positive, with many viewers relating to the interviewees’ stories or knowing someone who could relate to them. The viewers’ main criticisms were the length of the documentary and the transitions between interviews.

Soulliard responded to feedback by shortening the documentary from about 100 minutes to about 85 minutes and using more distinct transitions. “I did give it a little shape, and I think that’s going to make a big difference,” he said.

Tickets for the premiere are $10 and can be purchased at the door. Soulliard does not know how many people to expect in attendance, but he hopes that if This is Why I Believe gains traction, it could “open up the doors for Diakonia” by serving as an example of a successful film project created by Annubis Productions.