Meet ‘Alone Yet Not Alone,’ the Oscar-Nominated Christian Film Nobody’s Even Heard Of

If you happened to peruse a complete list of Academy Award nominations this morning only to find yourself scratching your head when you saw something called Alone Yet Not Alone in the "Best Original Song" category, don't worry. You're not alone. (See what I did there?) Not a single mainstream film reporter or blogger had heard of it until today. It's actually one of the most obscure Oscar-nominated films ever.

So what is it about? Well, in a nutshell, it's a (possibly racist) film about a bunch of American pioneers (i.e. beautiful white people with amazingly perfect teeth) who get kidnapped by a bunch of barbaric and blood-thirsty Native Americans (except they call them "injuns," and they are all portrayed by latinos in war paint) but never lose their faith in the Lord Jesus. The film was based on a book of the same name by Tracy Leininger Craven and produced by a company called Enthuse Entertainment, which makes "God-honoring, faith based, family friendly films that inspire the human spirit to seek and know God." It received some sort of "limited release" back in September, but judging by the fact that each reel came with a handy dandy "Church Study Guide," I'm thinking it was mostly in church basements rather than local cineplexes.

So how did the title song for this obscure movie wind up receiving an Oscar nomination? Well, as it turns out, it was written by a guy named Bruce Broughton, who is actually a film score composer of some pedigree. He received an Oscar nod in 1985 for the score to Silverado, and he's a member of both the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. So he probably just made a few phone calls and asked people to give the song a listen and...well, here we are.

Crazy, right?

In any case, here's the song, complete with inspirational opening prayer by world-famous evangelical quadriplegic singer, Joni Eareckson Tada:

H/T