The Man Who Built Peace

There are people who change the world without ever becoming household names. Frank Buchman was one of them.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1878, Buchman was a Lutheran minister whose life was quietly redirected by a single experience: his own inner transformation, arrived at through personal suffering, and the act of forgiving those who wronged him. What might have remained a private reckoning became something far larger. Buchman came to believe that the change he had experienced in himself could be passed on — to individuals, to communities, to nations.

The Man Who Built Peace traces what happened next. At a moment when the world was fracturing — through the bitter enmities of the Second World War and its aftermath — Buchman worked to bring former enemies to the table. The movement he founded, Moral Re-Armament, reached heads of state, generals and ordinary people alike, and its influence on post-war reconciliation in Europe was profound, if largely unacknowledged by history.

This is a film about one man's conviction that peace begins not in negotiations or treaties, but in the human heart. And about what that conviction, pursued with patience and courage, can set in motion.

Its lessons have never been more needed.

The film premiered at the Illuminate Film Festival in Sedona, Arizona, in June 2017. Awards include Best Documentary (MindField Film Festival, Los Angeles), Best Short Documentary (ARFF International), Best Director (European Cinematography Awards) and an Award of Merit (Impact DOCS Awards).