Growing up in a family where the Bible served as both historical and scientific fact, filmmaker Katy Scoggin's worldview changed drastically in college when she took a course on human evolution. This created a rift with her father Marvin, a young-earth creationist. In the midst of a new project about evolution and geologic time, Katy finds herself missing her estranged father. On the advice of her paleontologist mentors, she picks up the phone and eventually, her camera.
Returning to the home she grew up in, Katy catches her parents before they embark on a cross-country move, providing the perfect climate for collective reflection with her family. Filming her father creates a protective buffer that helps her to navigate tough conversations and irreconcilable differences. While observing him at work as a beloved elementary school science teacher, she begins to see him more fully even as she captures persistent, unsettling rifts at home with the rest of her family. Steadfast in his evangelical beliefs, Marvin has grown isolated from his progressive Christian, left-leaning younger daughter Kelly and Berkeley-bound grandson Andrew. Even Katy's mom Peggy, who met Marvin while they were on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ, has softened her religious zeal relative to her husband's. Despite all the familial strife, the Scoggin patriarch is determined to move across the country so he can play a part in the lives of his grandchildren.
As the family packs for the move, they uncover stories— captured in photos, videos, and old Bibles— that, like the fossils exhumed on the filmmaker's paleo expeditions, reveal how much they have changed over time. With moving day approaching, tension mounts as Katy and Marvin struggle to find common ground on topics such as evolution and gender roles. The road trip breaks open clashing ideals that have calcified over decades. Flood takes stock of the spectrum of contemporary Christianity in the U.S., and lays bare the complexity of a family that, like America, is both tightly knit and deeply divided.
FILMMAKER'S STATEMENT: "I got inspired to tell the Flood story in the badlands of western Kansas. I was filming with paleontologists, curious people who dig in the dirt, and who wonder at geologic time. They walked for days, scanning the ground for the edges of fossilized sea creatures.
The person I most wanted to tell about fossil collecting was my dad. I knew he would love the discovery of a vertebra and the rare chance that it could lead to a fully articulated fossil. I wanted to share with him that I was learning that Kansas had spent most of its geologic history underwater, and that it was really an ancient seabed. But this was impossible. I knew my father had long since rejected the theory of evolution, and that he did not believe in geologic time. He believed that Earth's creatures had descended from the surviving descendants of Noah's Ark. Also, my dad and I were not on good terms. Creationism v evolution was one of a million fights that had driven us apart.
'Have you interviewed your father?' asked a bearded fossil collector who was about my dad's age. 'And do you tell him you love him?' I was draped in film and recording gear. No, of course I hadn't interviewed my father. And I couldn't tell him anything. I'd quit talking to him years ago. 'You should talk to your dad,' he continued. 'And you should tell him you love him. Do you tell him you love him?' I might never have picked up the phone if this fossil hunter hadn't encouraged me to do so. I didn't know it at the time, but as soon as I made contact with my dad again, I had embarked on the ten-year journey that would lead to a film and a new beginning."
— Katy Scoggin
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