Guy Nattiv’s grandmother was a Holocaust survivor. She left her family and joined a cult. He made a film about it – principal photography ran from July 12 to August 19, 2025, across British Columbia under the working titles Harmonia and Love and Light. Vancouver served as the production’s primary base for principal photography, with the commune sequences filmed on Vancouver Island.
The Liberation is directed by Nattiv and co-written with Noa Berman-Herzberg – a mystery drama inspired by real events from the director’s own family history, set in the 1980s.
Carrie Coon plays Rita Cooper, a woman haunted by the weight of her past who encounters the magnetic young spiritual leader Ricki King (Lily James) and renounces her family to join Ricki’s all-female commune, Harmonia. When Rita’s daughters Ella (Bella Ramsey) and Jo (Odessa Young) arrive to bring her home, they find themselves drawn into the group’s seductive world.
The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on September 4, 2026, and screened at TIFF. Coon received the inaugural Luminary Award for acting at the Vancouver International Film Festival.
The Harmonia commune – the locked gates, the rural compound, the world Ricki builds for her followers – was shot in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island from July 24 to August 15, 2025. Port Alberni sits at the head of Vancouver Island’s longest inlet, surrounded by old-growth forest and logging roads. The last feature film to shoot there was Insomnia in the early 2000s.
The Vancouver Island portion of the shoot faced severe weather conditions – a local wildfire and a tsunami warning on the inlet temporarily impacted the production.
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The production used McLean Mill National Historic Site – a heritage steam-powered sawmill just outside Port Alberni. McLean Mill manager Elliot Drew said this was the third production to film at the mill within the past year. The crew consisted of more than 100 people and contributed over $500,000 into the local economy.
Filming also took place at Great Central Lake – a long, narrow lake deep in the Vancouver Island forest west of Port Alberni. The lake’s still water, its surrounding evergreen slopes and its total isolation from urban life provided the commune’s natural environment.
Scenes with Coon and the cult were filmed at English Bay in Vancouver – the city’s western beach, where the downtown skyline meets the Pacific.
Director Nattiv and his wife Jaime Ray Newman posted from the BCIT Aerospace campus in Richmond on the final day of production.
The Liberation is in limited US release from November 6, 2026, with a wide theatrical rollout on January 8, 2027, via Bleecker Street.
Wikipedia // Hollywood North Buzz // IMDb
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Eight years in the making. An action-musical set during the American Revolution. Built almost entirely on a Georgian estate in County Kildare. Drummer Boy – the new Angel Studios historical drama from four-time Grammy-winning Christian music group For King and Country – opens on November 6, 2026.
© Amazon MGM Studios, Civic Center Media // Photo Justin Lubin
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© Netflix // Photo Diyah Pera
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