Releasing this weekend, the new film “Lost on a Mountain in Maine,” starring Luke David Blumm, Paul Sparks, Caitlin FitzGerald and Ethan Slater, hearkens back to family adventure films of the past with a story grounded in community and “marinated in faith.” Director Andrew Boodhoo Kightlinger, inspired by the films of his childhood, aims to unite its viewers with its production value and compelling story.

Produced through Sylvester Stallone’s company, Balboa Productions, the film tells the story of a young boy who becomes lost in the wilderness and must rely on his faith and the support of his community to find his way home. For Kightlinger, the project represented a perfect blend of his own life experiences and a timely message about the power of human connection.

“Stallone has focused on making movies about humans who do incredible things and persevere,” Kightlinger said. “He’d never done one about a child before, so that’s why they took this on.”

Kightlinger’s own background as a missionary kid growing up in Madagascar and South Dakota gave him a unique perspective to bring to the material.

“I grew up kind of in the wild,” he said. “I was a missionary kid in Madagascar, born and raised for the first 12 years of my life, spent a lot of time in the rainforest barefoot, so I had an entry point visually of a kid in the woods barefoot, and then, and then moved to South Dakota, so wild prairies the American frontier. I inherently just love the nexus of art and nature and how those two kind of dance together and so that’s what drew me to the project.”

That connection to the natural world was put to the test during the final interview process for the film, which involved Kightlinger hiking what is considered the hardest non-technical day hike in America.

“My final job interview in this movie is kind of insane,” he said. “I was flown to northern Maine and had to hike the mountain. That was the final test, and it’s known as the hardest non-technical day hike in America. It’s really hard. It’s like doing the stair stepper for six hours straight up. It’s not easy. Obviously, I made it to the top. And the fun byproduct of doing that was I got to get in the headspace of the kid.”

Kightlinger also explained that while the film is not a normal faith-based film, his Christian background served as an important inspiration.

“One interviewer mentioned how the movie is kind of like a marinade of faith,” he said. “I was a missionary kid, and I also went to a Christian college, and was in a  Lutheran choir. So, it’s been part of my life. But I’m not an outwardly religious person, per se. What would I believe is that faith can be quite universal, especially if we get down to brass tacks and it’s about kindness and neighborliness. And, I think those are the core things we should get from the Bible, so I wanted the movie to reflect that, the simplicity of these are the things that matter, but also the idea that faith can make us do incredible things when we need it, and faith can inspire, especially when you’re out in the wilderness, which is a very sort of divine experience.”

While Stallone served as a “creative North Star” for the project, Kightlinger was given significant creative freedom to shape the film as he envisioned it. That included infusing it with classic storytelling elements that have become increasingly rare in modern family entertainment.

“When I first read the script and it was offered to me, I was up against about 10 other directors. I saw the movie immediately, and I first interviewed with them, I said, ‘I know exactly how to make this movie,'” Kightlinger said. “I wanted to make a broad, appealing family film that was also artful, and it’s in the way it was made. And, you know, has your random, you know, Tarkovsky reference here and there, you know.”

Those classic touches, which Kightlinger compares to films like “E.T.” and “White Fang,” help ground the story in a sense of timelessness that he believes is sorely needed in today’s divisive climate.

“It’s kind of almost shockingly relevant to what’s happening today. It’s not by design that we’re coming out days before the new presidential election, and there’s a lot of division, and there could be especially afterward and but even so, when I read this three years ago, we were still in the same place. And I thought to myself, we need to be reminded of how important our neighbors are.”

That community theme is one that Kightlinger is deeply familiar with, having grown up in the tight-knit environment of small-town South Dakota. He sees that sense of togetherness as a core value that is essential to share with audiences.

“I also was raised in South Dakota as well in my teen years and in college years, South Dakota is a very community-based state, not unlike Maine itself. And so that was a core value that was instilled in me, is how important your community is too. I wouldn’t be a filmmaker without the church ladies in my hometown believing in me and making hot dishes for the crew for my short films.”

Community is at the heart of the film, Kightlinger’s ultimate hope for the film is to stir up the love between parents and children: “Ultimately, my goal at the end of this is for when the credits roll for somebody to get out their phone and call their child and tell them that they love them, or vice versa,” he said.