Possum Trot: A True Story for Many in Macon
By Nyah Clifton
Throughout the year, people in Macon get the chance to experience many different activities around the city. One activity that is staple to Macon’s culture is film production. Movies like Marvel’s Black Widow (2021), Universal’s Fast Five (2011), and The Fate of the Furious (2017), have been filmed in various locations in the Middle Georgia area. While these films offer its audience fast-paced action scenes and heart-gripping suspense, there are movies being filmed here that strive to connect with its audience on a deeper level and share a forgotten story that is ready to be told.
In 2022, news broke out across Georgia about the production of a new movie called Possum Trot. The film, set to be released in 2023, is based on a a true story about 22 families from a rural church in the Texas town of Possum Trot who adopted 77 children from the foster care system. Executive producers Stephen Curry, an American professional basketball player for the Golden State Warriors, and Letitia Wright, known for her role as Shuri in Marvel’s Black Panther, want the film to launch as a movement designed to create change in the child welfare system. One student at Howard High School would agree with the film’s motives.
Keira Moore, a freshman at Howard, will be playing the role of Vanessa in the new movie. Like many other film enthusiasts, she decided to audition when the news first broke out. Although she was not interested in the film at first, her mother encouraged her to take the spotlight.
“She called me in the living room and she had that happy tone that a mom has. So I’m like okay I got to go in there,” Keira said, “So I go in there and she’s like they’re having a call for a biracial female. And [my mom was] like tell your father and he’ll take you tomorrow.”
With this being Keira’s first time acting in a movie, she found it, “confusing, stressful, scary, and a little overwhelming.” However as time went by she started to get the hang of it.
Keira said, “Acting is pretty fine. It’s just you being yourself.”
In Georgia, there are currently 11,000 children (about the seating capacity of Cameron basketball stadium at Duke University) in the foster care system according to Georgia’s Department of Human Services. Even though Keira has not personally experienced going through the foster care system, she likes the message that the movie is trying to send and encourages others to watch it when it comes out.
“I think [Possum Trot] is cool. I’m sure the whole reason of the movie is to bring awareness to the struggles that foster care kids are going through. I think it will be a good, interesting, and dramatic movie for people to watch,” she said.
Possum Trot’s cast list is extensive with stars like Nia Long, known for her roles in Friday (1995) and Boyz N The Hood (1991), and Nika King, known for her role as Leslie Bennet in the hit show Euphoria (2019). However, Possum Trot’s story effects the lives of real people in Macon including Starla Guevara.
Starla, a senior at Howard, enjoys many things in life. She loves crocheting, baking, and watching movies. She also has the passion to study psychology to become a therapist after high school. Aside from these things, the main thing that Starla enjoys is fostering children.
Starla and her family started the process to foster in 2021. After a year of training, her family was finally approved to become a foster family.
“My family and I were interested in fostering to be able to share our home and give comfort and stability to children in need. The process took over a year with basic training, taking tests, and becoming certified in certain areas in order to foster a child,” she said.
Over the years, Starla’s family has fostered four children under the age of ten. By doing this, Starla’s life has been greatly impacted.
She said, “Fostering showed me the hardships that children face everyday with being in the foster care system. It has allowed me to become more grateful for the family I have and grateful that we have been able to foster and give to children in need.”
Like Keira, Starla was introduced to Possum Trot when filming was announced in Macon. She thinks that it is important for stories like this to be told because it allows people to see how the foster care system affects children through the good and the bad. In the future, Starla plans to open her home to fostering and encourages other people to foster but only if they are ready.
“Other people should foster only if they feel able and prepared to spend their time on the children that they will be fostering because foster care is a full-time commitment,” she said, “When fostering, no child will be the same, and they all struggle with different things and need different care.”
The foster care system is a crucial topic on and off the screen. During this crisis, more awareness for children and their welfare is essential to solving this issue. Hopefully as Possum Trot hits the big screens later this year, the goal to spark change in the child welfare system will be fulfilled.
