Choices of the Heart | |
---|---|
Genre | Drama |
Written by | John Pielmeier |
Directed by | Joseph Sargent |
Starring | Melissa Gilbert Peter Horton Helen Hunt Mary McCusker Mari Gorman Pamela Bellwood Patrick Cassidy René Enríquez Mike Farrell Martin Sheen |
Theme music composer | John Rubinstein |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Executive producers | Sandy Gallin John Houseman |
Producers | David W. Rintels Joseph Sargent |
Production locations | Churubusco Studios, Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico |
Cinematography | Jorge Stahl Jr. |
Editor | George Jay Nicholson |
Running time | 100 minutes |
Production companies | Katz-Gallin Productions Half-Pint Productions Metromedia |
Distributor | NBC |
Release | |
Original network | NBC |
Picture format | Color |
Audio format | Mono |
Original release |
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Choices of the Heart is an American made-for-television drama film based on the lives of Jean Donovan, Archbishop Oscar Romero, and three American religious sisters who were killed in El Salvador in the Civil War.[1][2][3]
The film is based on actual events. On March 24, 1980, Romero was killed, alongside three Roman Catholic religious sisters and a lay Catholic missionary on December 2, 1980, by Salvadoran death squad, possibly funded by the United States.[3] Three women dedicated their lives to helping refugees and sick people for years.[4] Jean Donovan had been in El Salvador for over two years helping the children that she was so devoted to.[4] Donovan says over and over in her letters to her family in the U.S. that God brought her to El Salvador.[4] These women were raped, tortured, and killed by members of a Salvadoran death squad.[3] Attempts from the Salvadoran and American governments were made to try to cover the murders up.[3]
The production was filmed mostly in Mexico. Mike Farrell plays Robert C. White, then U.S. President Jimmy Carter's Ambassador to El Salvador, who keeps running into official interference and noncooperation in his investigation concerning the murdered women.[3] Martin Sheen appears as Matt Phelan, a Dublin priest whom Miss Donovan meets while spending her junior college year in Ireland.[3]