On Father’s Day at Fifth Ward’s DeLUXE Theater, the air reverberated with cheerful anticipation and the scent of popcorn as audience members settled in to watch the premiere of Finding Ben. Most Houstonians know Courtney Lindsay as the local chef and restaurateur behind vegan mainstay Mo’ Brunch and Brews, but that day, he settled in to watch the documentary he coproduced, the visual retelling of how he met his father for the first time at age 40.

The journey began when previously unknown family members started appearing on genealogy and DNA sampling sites. Lindsay was raised by his mother and a stepfather. He says the relationship with the man of the house “wasn’t the best.” Once Lindsay met his biological father, who worked down at the Houston Ship Channel, the connection took some time to develop.

He was apprehensive at first, fearing that meeting Ben face-to-face would result in disappointment and disillusionment at a time when he wanted to focus on his growth and happiness. But last summer, after some deep soul-searching, Lindsay called his father. Ben was ecstatic. In the film, his voice cracks with profound emotion as he recounts the story of discovering that he had a son. The pair met for coffee, an experience Lindsay describes as “magical, almost spiritual,” filling  voids in his heart he never realized were there in the first place.

“It was such a good, positive reunion…a vulnerable and breaking-down-of-walls type of situation,” Lindsay says. “I felt like we had to tell this story.”

Both Courtney and his wife, Chasitie Lindsay, who both majored in film at Texas Southern University, initially intended to bring the touching tale to viewers in the form of a YouTube series, but their close friend and filmmaker Nana Kojo Nkunim saw its potential as a feature-length documentary. He joined the project as a codirector alongside Chasitie, an endeavor that he calls a “no-brainer.” Little did he know, it would help him through the grief he felt from his own father’s passing three years prior.

“That was kind of like a redemption for me, to help my friend tell the story, and also for our community,” Nkunim says. “As people of color, we are very aware of the stigma that comes with Black men… If you hear ‘deadbeat,’ most of the time people associate that with a Black man, and that’s a problem, because Black fathers are home and raising their kids and guiding them and showing them a way to maneuver through life the same way as [men of] other…ethnicities have.”

Nkunim was also the one who pitched the idea of incorporating locations significant to the Lindsays, including an ancient oak in Baldwin Park, with limbs so thick and heavy they curve downward onto the ground. You can still climb it and find a few spots to perch, if you’re sure-footed enough, but ultimately this aged beauty lives at gravity’s mercy. It’s in this elegant tangle and dignified natural wisdom that Finding Ben finds its central metaphor, a dramatic image that flows beneath a beautiful story of fatherhood and serves as its thematic anchor.

“That tree could represent so much in terms of connecting the dots with your family tree,” Chasitie says.

Since the reunion took place only last year, the filmmakers seized the opportunity to capture some of the major milestones of Lindsay and Ben’s relationship in real time. Chasitie used Lindsay’s journals from that period to outline the film’s narrative and the interview questions for Lindsay, Ben, and other subjects.

“It just felt natural, almost like having a conversation…I was kind of like the glue that helped pull all the pieces together,” Chasitie says. “I give [Kojo] credit for visually bringing the aesthetic, the certain themes throughout the film [that] tie those pieces together visually.”

Ben, with a smile gracing his face in nearly every frame, is an effervescent presence throughout the film. He immediately embraces his newfound roles as father and grandfather to the Lindsays’ two sons, giving them gifts and cash. A pivotal moment in both the film and their relationship occurs when Lindsay, his sons, and Ben visit the barbershop together. That’s when Lindsay says he truly started seeing Ben as his father.

“I got the best parts of my mother and my father,” he says. “I got the mental toughness and strength [from] my mom, and then I got the tenderness and that kind, warm heart and loving spirit from my dad.”

Neither Lindsay nor Ben saw the final cut until its premiere. Ben cried, along with much of the audience. Chasitie says that “the love [was] just [trickling] down from beginning to end.”

Finding Ben premiered precisely when we needed it. At its heart, the documentary is about the kind of grace we rarely extend both to others and to ourselves. The producers and directors seek to extol the virtues of redemption, of second chances, and, sometimes, of having to wait for the right people to come into your life at the right moment. Lindsay and Ben’s ever-evolving bond offers hope at a time when the world often feels overwhelmingly bleak. Future screenings are currently in the works, and the Lindsays hope to continue making even more movies.

“If [viewers] have a great relationship with their father or their parent, it’s a feel-good story,” Lindsay says of his debut film. “I think that it changes the perspective on how people love and how people hold others accountable for being human. I think a lot of times we put too much on people and forget the fact that they are human.”