Wowing audiences at film festivals around the world, Velcrow Ripper's must-see documentary SCAREDSACRED was awarded a special jury citation at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival® "for its ability to take the audience on a very personal journey that has universal resonance in a time of paranoia and uncertainty, and for finding hope in moments of despair." As the end of the millennium approached, tales of the apocalypse abounded. Within this climate of heightened fear, Ripper wondered what would happen if we were to embrace fear and anguish rather than flee from it? What ensued was a five-year pilgrimage around the globe as Ripper searched for the ways in which humanity takes the experience of being scared and turns it into something sacred. Travelling the world, Ripper visits sites of various forms of catastrophe, among them genocide, environmental disaster and terrorism. He moves from the scarred city of Sarajevo to the minefields of Cambodia , from Lourdes to Flanders Field. In each place, Ripper finds stories of survival and ingenuity despite the devastation. He learns of a musician in Afghanistan - forbidden to play or listen to music - who fills his house with songbirds; he witnesses Afghani women protesting in the streets to assert their rights; and he sees a doctor setting up a medical practice to tend to the victims of chemically devastated Bhopal . He discovers acts of resilience both large and small. SCAREDSACRED is both a deeply moving personal travelogue and a political documentary about the state of the world as filtered through the eyes of its narrator, Ripper. At times his journey is harrowing. How can one visit such places and not be deeply affected? Is such a journey justified or is it simply a form of morbid death tourism? Throughout his travels, Ripper learns a crucial lesson: we must breathe in suffering, breathe out compassion.

"Poetic.moving.impressive. Gracefully interwoven images, editing and sound design lend textural richness well above [the] documentary norm."
Dennis Harvey, Variety