I arrived in the city of Winston-Salem last year at the same time as A Little Prayer, one of the best films of 2025, and a film about the people here. It was a real local sensation, going on an extensive run at A/perture Cinema. It played for two months, opening August 8th and closing October 16th. 2025. Speaking with A/perture curator Jake Laystrom via email, he says, “Film runs always vary, a typical booking for this kind of budgeted independent film is usually just one week, with maybe two or three total if it does really well. We haven’t had a Winston-Salem shot and set film with such a great response in years, maybe ever. Certainly well before my time at a/.”
More than once when writing in coffeeshops and teashouses, I overheard conversations from locals about the film and its director, Angus MacLachlan (Junebug, Goodbye to All That). He’s an alumnus of UNCSA here in town. A Little Prayer released on Blu-Ray on January 27th, 2026 from Music Box films, and it’s a wonderful, quiet drama.
L-R: Will Pullen as David and Jane Levy as Tammy in Angus MacLachlan’s 2025 drama A LITTLE PRAYER. Photo Courtesy of Music Box Films.
The film stars David Strathairn (Lincoln; Matewan) as Bill, a father and business owner near retirement age. He’s a Vietnam veteran and his son, David, fought in the Middle East. Together they run a steel manufacturing business here in the Triad of North Carolina. Strathairn gives the performance of a lifetime as Bill but, remarkably, most viewers leave the film talking about another performer, Jane Levy (Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist; Don’t Breathe). She plays Bill’s daughter-in-law, Tammy, who lives with David (Will Pullen (Causeway; Greyhound)) in a guest house on the family property.
The beating heart of the film is the love between Bill and Tammy, who is certainly his favorite child, blood or otherwise. Bill is married to Celia Weston’s (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days; The Talented Mr. Ripley) Venida, who spends her days as an in-costume guide to the historic Moravian village here in Winston-Salem. Their domestic bliss is interrupted by their two children. First, their other daughter, Pattie, played by Anna Camp (Pitch Perfect; The Help), leaves her husband and brings her own daughter home with her. Then, most crucially, Bill realizes that David is cheating on Tammy.
David Strathairn as Bill in Angus MacLachlan’s 2025 drama A LITTLE PRAYER. Photo Courtesy of Music Box Films.
Parenthood is well-tilled soil in cinema, but what MacLachlan does in A Little Prayer is rare in its focus on how one tries to parent adult children. Should Bill intervene in David and Tammy’s marriage? And, if he does, whose side does he take? Is he enabling Pattie or rescuing her? Was he a bad father or is this just a part of growing up they don’t tell you about?
“You want something to love that’s all your own, hm? Something that, uh, that’s all yours? Well you’ve never had children. They don’t belong to you. And they will break your heart.”
In the included director’s commentary, MacLachlan states that he wanted to make a film about mid-century “solidity” and the impact it left on the American South, specifically the South he lives in. The white community of the purple North Carolina Triad, made up of High Point, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem.
The neighborhoods are brick and the locations are as close to ancient as it gets around here. The Reynolda House Art Museum and grounds feature prominently, as does the Moravian cemetery in Old Salem. The impact of the land, a short-lived heritage of prosperity that has not yet grown roots, is understated but critically rendered in the story. The GI Bill, the tobacco industry, and colonialism all shade the world of A Little Prayer.
In the included Q&A from Ebert Fest, MacLachlan emphasizes that he does not consider himself a political filmmaker despite the culture war topics that roll out of the film’s inciting incident. Instead, he wanted to highlight how our political philosophies are paper-thin until they affect the people we know. This is a fact of life for most political pedestrians that the politically engaged often lament, a roadblock to organizing and persuasion. And yet, anger easily sprouts at a hypothetical, but solidarity is built on kinship and community. As it is anywhere, so it is here.
A Little Prayer is not a film about abortion, but it does include one, a devastating scene filmed on the day of the Dobbs decision. And you can feel it. Where most competent films that tackle the subject prioritize the woman’s point of view in the narrative, the woman who makes that decision is not this film’s lead. Instead, MacLachlan risked writing a film centered on the man’s responsibility in an abortion — their responsibility to their partner to create a healthy social environment for that choice. Betrayal, rejection, and control have no place, but villainy does in A Little Prayer. These feelings have their place in the discussion around an abortion, but from the woman to the man, not the other way around.
While I am certain that, in a political argument, Bill and I would be at each other’s throats very quickly, Strathairn and MacLachlan manage to draw from him an understanding of masculinity that he is still in the process of learning; a masculinity centered in that “sturdiness.” By centering the narrative on the struggle between two men, the familial politics of abortion supplant the national culture war. What could be heavy is instead light but solid.
L-R: Jane Levy as Tammy and David Strathairn as Bill at the Reynolda House in Angus MacLachlan’s 2025 drama A LITTLE PRAYER. Photo Courtesy of Music Box Films.
The filmmaking of A Little Prayer also channels this sturdiness with a bread-and-butter relationship to hand-held photography. However, those who saw the film in theaters can go to the director’s commentary for discussion of the singular, obviously botched shot of the film. During a walk-and-talk, a strange shake in the focus plane unintentionally disrupts a beautiful scene. MacLachlan gives a sensitive semi-answer, resisting the temptation to throw the post-production culprit under the bus while acknowledging the mistake. Such is the cost of indie-filmmaking, and the disk and film otherwise look stellar.
Also included on the disk is MacLachlan and Levy’s interview on Inside the Arthouse, and host Greg Laemmle produces the quote “David Stratherin … that’s that actor who can never lie.” It’s a wonderful thing to say about an actor, and there are few actors who deserve it more.
David Strathairn as Bill in Angus MacLachlan’s 2025 drama A LITTLE PRAYER. Photo Courtesy of Music Box Films.
I’ve met Bill, I swear I have, in men by the name of Kenny, John, and PJ from my teenage years in the Triad. Is he the man in a well-loved button-down who turned to me in the High Point Regal Cinemas after Armageddon Time (2022) and asked me, “What’s that ending?” Did Bill ever order a Cookout milkshake when my assistant Scoutmaster worked at the first location in the ‘90s? I’ll bet he also says the name “Nido Quabain” with disdain, but then again, maybe not.
New York and LA are cities populated by pilgrims hoping to live in the dreamscapes they saw in film and television. Here, people move to The Triad for work. The state’s dreamscapes languish in a retirement home in Wilmington. Still, Bill’s love of art, and Venida’s love of history let Angus MacLachlan give us a gift in A Little Prayer.
The other week, I walked the grounds of the Reynolda House for the first time, searching for a bench. In a field, I stood under a tree and thought about how long it had stood there before we forced men like Bill to commit acts of genocide in Vietnam and tricked their sons like David into doing the same in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Reynolda House was closed for renovations. After more than a hundred years, there’s still more work to be done. When it reopens in March, I’ll return to see the painting that fills Bill with only so much peace.
Walking the trail, surrounded by Valentine’s couples, I came to the edge of the water where a conversation on a bench closes A Little Prayer.
Between COVID, the Hollywood strikes, and the slow-crawl of independent distribution, it’s been many years since Bill and Tammy sat here. That bench seems to have been placed there for the film, but there’s another just a few feet away. It’s sturdy with a half-life, poured from concrete. The brambles have grown onto the path, and the answers to the questions Tammy and Bill raised seem farther away than ever.
And yet, now, it was as if from a dream I saw. What a gift.
A Little Prayer Special Features:
- Audio Commentary by Director Angus MacLachlan
- Inside the Arthouse Interview with Angus MacLachlan and Jane Levy
- Panel Discussion from EbertFest 2025
- Image Gallery
- Theatrical Trailer
Available on VOD and digital October 7th, 2025.
Available on Blu-ray and DVD January 27th, 2026.
Available on Prime Video March 3rd, 2026.
For more information, head to the official Music Box Films A Little Prayer webpage.
Final Score: 5 out of 5.
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Categories: Films To Watch, Home Release, Home Video, Recommendation, Reviews, streaming
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