One Film Speaks to Three Faiths That Walk in Opposite Directions

Ruslan Zavricico's senior film project stood between him and graduation. Film students at Southern Adventist University finish their degree by writing, directing, and delivering a project of their own, and Zavricico wanted his project to reach Muslims. So the film's focus is a story Muslims hold dear, that of patriarch Abraham taking his son up a mountain to kill him, at God's command. Zavricico's challenge was to use the story three faiths have in common, while not alienating his intended audience. Abraham's son would remain unnamed for the entire 12-minute film.

The Son of Abraham, which began as a senior project, has won two awards at the International Christian Film and Music Festival for Best Director and Audience Choice, and stars Academy Award-nominated actor Eric Roberts. Hope Studios, the film and storytelling arm of Hope Channel International, partnered with Zavricico and Adventist Muslim Relations to produce and distribute it, and it is now being translated into Arabic, Persian, and Turkish.

Those three languages point at one stretch of the map. Between 10 and 40 north latitude, from West Africa across the Middle East and into Asia, live most of the people who have never heard the gospel of Jesus. Mission agencies call it the 10/40 window. In much of it, a foreign missionary cannot work openly.

Three Abrahamic faiths have built traditions around one shared story

Each year Muslims around the world observe Eid al-Adha, which honors the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son. Many families mark it by sacrificing a sheep, goat, or cow. In the Quran's account, the father tells the son what he has been asked to do and the son answers him. "O my father, do as you are commanded," he says. God then stops the killing and, in the words of the text, ransoms the son "with a great sacrifice." In that whole passage, Surah as-Saffat 37:99 to 113, the son is never named.

Jews and Christians alike find the story in Genesis 22, Jews reading from the Torah, aloud in the synagogue traditionally on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, their new year. They call it the Akedah, the binding. There the son is named. God tells Abraham to take "your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love" (Genesis 22:2). The boy carries the wood up the mountain on his own back and asks his father, "Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" (v. 7). At the last moment, Abraham sees a ram caught in a thicket by its horns and offers it instead of his son.

Christians have long read this chapter as pointing toward something still to come. The New Testament returns to the story in Hebrews 11, where it says that Abraham, when he was tested, "offered up his only begotten son," and that he did it "concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead" (v. 17-18).

A father is asked for his son. Father and son go toward the place of sacrifice. God stops the father's hand and provides an animal to die instead. One crucial difference between the traditions is the name, and the name is the one thing Zavricico left out of the script. He put the son in nearly every scene and never let a character identify him.

"I want the audience to notice right away that we're focusing on the son," he said.

A sermon in Vancouver sends a student back to Genesis 22

Zavricico grew up with the story and heard it many times. At a church in Vancouver, Washington, he heard Genesis 22 laid beside the last hours of Jesus.

"I realized how close Jesus must have been to Abraham and especially his son, knowing that He would walk the same journey with His own Father," he recalled.

The camera follows the son and stays with him. The connection to Jesus is left to what the viewer sees, and no character explains it, an approach Hope Studios describes as designed to open conversation with Muslim, Jewish, and Christian viewers.

"Unlike Abraham's son, Jesus went all the way," Zavricico said. "He has done it for us, out of love. Nobody took His life, but He laid it down voluntarily. And yet somehow, He had peace and trust in His Father's love."

A student joins a professional film crew in Tennessee

A year before directing his first film, Zavricico spent three weeks on the crew of Slick, a short film produced by Southern Adventist University and filmed in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Nick Livanos, associate professor in Southern's School of Visual Art and Design, was an executive producer on the film. He said the project, written and directed by Southern and crewed by Southern students, provided real-world experience alongside professional mentorship. The university partnered with Hope Studios, which financed the casting for the project and is now the sales agent and distributor, increasing the project's reach.

Students carry the altar wall on their shoulders across the hilltop where the film was shot. Credit: Ruslan Zavricico's personal archive

Zavricico's job on the Slick shoot was script supervisor, or scripty, Livanos calls it on set. The script supervisor keeps the film consistent, staying beside the director and recording dialogue, costume, behavior, and actions in every take.

"His path was not so much changed as firmly solidified," Livanos said. "Slick sealed the deal, and he knows he's going to direct."

In 2026, Zavricico directed his senior thesis with special funding from Hope Channel, and that film was The Son of Abraham.

Zavricico has graduated. The film is finished, and what leaves Tennessee now are three translations, headed for the 10/40 window where the story of Abraham and his son is already recounted and cherished every year.

"I hope that it makes them think through his emotions first," Zavricico said, "and realize that giving your life for something so uncertain is difficult."