ALREADY FREE documents the profound transformation of Dorrie van Roji-Houtappels and Norberto Rodrigues. Though living thousands of miles apart, they travel the same path to awakening–a life cultivation path, Ren Xue. The practice opens them to the true freedom of mind and heart that is the ultimate promise of most spiritual traditions.
Dorrie, an inquisitive thinker and mother of two, currently living in Auckland, New Zealand, explores the meaning of life as she faces depression, doubt and fear.
Norberto, a spiritual seeker and young martial artist living in Lisbon, Portugal, finds himself facing permanent disability and constant pain through severe injury to his back.
Each struggles with a doubt that crippled them in the past, but through dedication, a willful openness to the realities of life and complete surrender, they find a deep trust that reveals their true freedom.
The viewer is invited into this world through intimate interviews, beautiful cinematography and revealing animation that tell a story that is beyond words. These portraits introduce us to doubtful but loving family members, surprisingly astute teenage children, and thankful students. We see two normal people who have reached a higher state of being and inner peace that fundamentally alters the way they feel, think and live. The effect of Dorrie and Norberto’s transformation on those around them is perhaps the most remarkable revelation of the film.
For the viewer, close-up studies of the Qigong movements are a compelling invitation to experience the quiet depth of these slow, thoughtful practices. We are drawn into the deep sense of energized calm that is Dorrie and Norberto’s inner experience and which is, they tell us, the natural state of all humans. In the end, this film is an offering, gently inviting all of us to understand that we are, in fact, Already Free.
More info at www.alreadyfreefilm.org
Made in 2019
Kim Shelton, Producer/Director
Sally Hinds, Producer
Bill Weber, Editor
Vicente Franco, Camera
Todd Boekelheide, Original Music
May Kindred Boothby, Animation
“Wow, phenomenal film, both its subject and its craft. Beautiful.”
Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychologist and Author of N.Y. Times bestseller: Hardwiring for Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm and Confidence