‘We are living in a time of planetary crisis,’ says Velcrow Ripper, the director of Fierce Light: When Spirity Meets Action, a ‘compassionate activist’ documentary and his highly anticipated follow-up to the Genie-winning ScaredSacred, which premieres Wednesday night at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

A global search for spiritual activists, Fierce Light features South African descendents of Mahatma Gandhi, famed American civil rights advocate John Lewis and Hollywood celebrities Daryl Hannah and Danny Glover. Ripper is confident that all of his activists, from the most famous to the least, ‘are going to back this film, come to screenings, and help us to attract a wide audience.’

The feature has already secured Canadian distribution through Entertainment One’s Seville Pictures, but all other territories remain open for acquisition.

Executive producer Mark Achbar (The Corporation) invested more than 35% of Fierce Light‘s $1.1-million budget through his Telefilm Canada performance envelope.

‘Velcrow made a substantial contribution to The Corporation in sound design and editing and music supervision,’ says Achbar. ‘I have a lot of faith in his abilities and wanted to help him realize his project in a fully budgeted way. Each of the films in my envelope — and Fierce Light is the first to be released — I’m happy to see made because they speak to concerns that I have about the world.’

Another major investor in Fierce Light is the National Film Board, which contributed $350,000 to the socially aware film, which deals with human rights and ‘green’ issues in countries ranging from India to South Africa to the U.S. Producer Cherilyn Hawrysh is anticipating working on the film’s domestic release with Jane Gutteridge, the NFB’s expert in community outreach, as well as with Bryan Gliserman, managing director of Maximum/Seville Pictures E1 theatrical division.

‘We want to have a social marketing push that will complement our distributor’s approach,’ says Ripper. ‘We want to have conventional advertising with a real base of popular support created through mail outs and updates on our website. We have a great track record with ScaredSacred, which we self-released, and an enormous fan base, which we’ll tap into. We want that group of supporters to be part of the story of the success of the film by having them mobilize the audience in each community when the film is released.’