A Sacred Pause Receives Best Documentary (Short) at Sedona International Film Festival

Contact:
Kelli Montomery
Selah Carefarm
info@missfoundation.org
www.SelahCarefarm.org

Sedona, AZ — Jon Bregel’s documentary A Sacred Pause has been awarded Best Documentary (Short) at the esteemed Sedona International Film Festival.

Selection into the Sedona International Film Festival represents a significant achievement in itself. The festival is recognized for showcasing films that demonstrate artistic excellence, compelling storytelling, and cultural relevance. To be included amongst the official selections signals that a film has met the highest standard of creative, storytelling, and technical distinction. To receive this award underscores that distinction for the film even further.

A Sacred Pause offers an unembellished portrait of catastrophic loss and the sacred, often invisible work of living after the unthinkable. At a time when those in mourning are frequently dramatized in fictional narratives yet ostracized in daily life, the film presents something rarer: unperformed sorrow, borne by real people, in real time. While audiences routinely weep for scripted portrayals of tragedy, many struggle to sit beside a neighbor or colleague whose devastation is not imagined but lived. This film confronts that cultural paradox. It refuses spectacle. It declines sentimentality. Instead, it offers witness.

This recognition by the Sedona International Film Festival affirms something essential: stories of traumatic loss deserve space. They deserve to be held without turning away. The award signals both artistic excellence and cultural courage.

Selah Carefarm provides immersive, community-based support for individuals and families navigating profound loss. Through nature, the presence of rescued animals, and thoughtfully trained counseling care, Selah Carefarm is a place where the bereaved are not pathologized or hurried toward recovery, but are met with dignity, steadiness, and compassion.

“This award,” Executive Director Kelli Montgomery noted, “is more than recognition. It is invitation. An invitation to bear witness and to build systems of care worthy of those who bear the unbearable.’

For more information about A Sacred Pause or Selah Carefarm, please visit www.SelahCarefarm.org.