Lance Oppenheim’s debut docoumentary, Some Kind of Heaven, is a deep, thoughtful, complex portrait of life in The Villages, Florida’s planned New Urbanist retirement community.

Like a day in a Disney dream-land, the “heaven-on-earth” glow of life in The Villages ultimately fades — quicker for some than others — and rather than rich fulfilling nourishment we are left with nothing but the sickly false-taste of artificial sweeteners. Alas, it would seem, humans are not so easily fooled by murals and mirages, by facades and fabrications, try as we might to self-deceive. Somewhere deep down, our inner souls crave the sustenance of real community and honest spiritual meaning; we are not easily satisfied with a fiction or a lie.

Read my full review of the film on Arts Fuse.