VINEGAR HILL

A. Manette Ansay’s award-winning novel now becomes a haunting film about the lies that bind and destroy a family and the salvation that can only come from the truth…

Laid off from their jobs and backed into unavoidable financial hardship, Jake (Tim Guinee, Personal Velocity) and Ellen Grier (Golden Globe winner Mary-Louise Parker, Angels in America) and their children, Amy (Clare Stone, The Shattered City) and Bert (Ty Wood), leave Chicago to return to the rural hometown where they met years before—and back to the farm where Jake was born and raised. Appropriately christened Vinegar Hill, it’s home to acrid family sentiments where the shadow of a past tragedy still lingers—the tragic and mysterious death of Jake’s brother Mitch. Far from a happy homecoming, Jake’s abusive father Fritz (Emmy winner Tom Skerritt, Alien) still rules the oppressive and hostile nest with an iron fist. He takes pleasure in having control over his wife Mary-Margaret (Emmy nominee Betty Buckley, Oz) and makes little effort to hide his displeasure at now having to support his “disappointment” of a son and his family.

Humbled by the experience of having to move back home, Jake and Ellen struggle against the odds—both personal and professional—to keep their marriage together. But as family tensions build, so does the temptation to escape it. For Ellen, it’s her high school sweetheart Tom, now the local sheriff, who offers her the comfort and gentleness she craves. For Tom, it’s a fallback on liquor, more lies, and a one-night stand. Out of desperation and the settling dust of bitterness, comes the time for Jake’s family to finally speak of unspoken things…of a devastating choice made by Mary-Margaret when she was a young mother…of the mysterious accident that claimed the life of Jake’s brother…and of the secret that was buried with him.

Adapted by Suzette Couture (The Book of Ruth) from the acclaimed Oprah’s Book Club selection and called “a modern-day Little House on the Prairie gone mad” by Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club), Vinegar Hill is an explosive film about one family’s galvanising independence from the past—as uncompromising and riveting as it is ultimately triumphant and inspiring.