1999, South Texas.

Sixteen-year-old Jonah lives with his devout mother, Rachel, in a cramped trailer. Since his father’s death, movie nights have vanished, replaced by long shifts, tight budgets, and Sundays consumed by the church.

Then Jonah finds a way out of the endless loop of school, work, and worship.

Every Sunday, he tells his mom he is going to youth group. Instead, he drops her at service and slips away to the multiplex. Week after week, he sits alone in the dark, watching some of the greatest films of 1999 and letting the glow of the screen carry him somewhere else.

Over the course of one summer, between screenings, Jonah falls in love for the first time, faces the cracks in his family, and begins to see the possibility of a life beyond the trailer walls.

Drawn from the life of writer Reynaldo Leal, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and Rio Grande Valley native, Popcorn Prophets is a tender, unvarnished coming-of-age story about resilience, love, and the way movies can save us, if only for a couple of hours.