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Ironically, it took nearly two years for Into The Spotlight to see the light of day on streaming services.
Directed by Dallas-based filmmaker Thaddeus Matula, the documentary follows Highland Park United Methodist Church‘s Spotlight program, an annual theatre production that’s cast and staffed entirely by adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. With the help of guides, the group writes, designs and performs a new original musical each year.
Matula followed the program during its 2021-22 season, profiling the subjects and culminating in the show’s 11th annual closing performance.
In April 2023, the film premiered at the Dallas International Film Festival before back-to-back sold-out crowds at the Texas Theatre and Violet Crown Cinemas. After the premiere, Matula took the stage for a Q&A, joined by some of the documentary’s standout subjects. The response in those rooms was rapturous.
Into The Spotlight is supremely crowd-pleasing, not only due to its humor and charming subjects but also for the grounded portrayal of adults with neurological disabilities. Audiences and judges felt the same, too, as the film took home DIFF’s grand jury prize of Best Texas Feature and the audience award for Best Documentary Feature.
Those hometown screenings were followed by a yearlong festival tour, picking up award wins at festivals across Texas and in New York, Missouri and Canada.
While the praise felt like an indomitable moment, it seemed to fade all too quickly. For two years after its dominant festival run, Into The Spotlight sat in distribution limbo, having outlived its festival lifespan with no distribution deal in place. Matula moved on to other projects, including a documentary on Cuban activist and daughter of Fidel Castro, Alina Fernández.
Until recently, film-loving Dallasites who caught the film during its aforementioned local screenings had no way to revisit it. Now, it’s available everywhere.
In February, the official Into The Spotlight Instagram account, which had been dormant since spring 2024, announced that the film was finally being made available on video on demand, DVD and on American Airlines flights through platforms such as Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV.
“The more exciting thing, oddly enough, is being available on American Airlines flights,” Matula says. “The thing about Into The Spotlight is that it’s on demand when you’re not on the flight, but you can get it for free on the flight, so I’ve been getting plenty of messages from travelers.”
For Matula, there’s comfort in knowing the film is getting a second wind.
“I like that it’s still finding an audience,” he says. “I like that when the audience finds it, they love it. It’s just luck of the draw. We either need one of the people in the documentary to become super famous, or I need to start making bigger films.”
As the film finally finds its footing, Matula is still holding out for the film to land on a dedicated streaming service, something he hopes viewers will help push through online engagement. The film currently sits at 9.1/10 on iMDB, 24 user likes on Letterboxd and all positive critic reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
“They’re watching how our sales and rentals do and how the responses on various sites were,” Matula says. “People can cast their votes and put a star rating on it. If anybody out there wants to see this, the best way to help us do that is to rent or buy it, but also rate it on Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb and of course, Letterboxd.”
Matula says being able to finally share his work with greater audiences is what matters most, though.
“I’m incredibly proud of the work,” he says. “I’m grateful that we’re now in a place where people can find it.”
Into The Spotlight is available now on Amazon.
