Award-winning film setting biblical story in modern day to screen in Columbus

What started as an idea in a screenwriting class in 2007 is now a full-length movie making its Columbus debut. 

Music and film producer Domingo Guyton’s 2025 feature “Yesterday Today Forever” is screening at Rainey-McCullers School of the Arts on June 13 before it lands on Amazon Prime Video this month. For Guyton and other collaborators on the film, the road to develop this project from a draft to its debut has been long and challenging.

Guyton has been carrying a camera around since he was a child. While in college, Guyton bought a VHS recorder and filmed in his Boston neighborhood for fun before going on to produce music videos and documentaries.

For the first five years of the project’s life, “Yesterday Today Forever” was a short film, which premiered in Boston in 2012. When Guyton screened the short film at a festival in Gary, Indiana, he met filmmaker and Fortson resident Ty Manns. This film festival meeting began their friendship and started a seven-year process turning “Yesterday Today Forever” into a full-length script.

Manns, a writer who has been working on scripts for decades, can write a screenplay in a month. “Yesterday Today Forever,” on the other hand, is Guyton’s first feature. Manns said Guyton visited him in Phenix City as he wrote the script, lengthening the typical script creation timeline but allowing Guyton to gain a deeper understanding of writing.

“For Domingo, to his credit, he took the time to learn the process,” Manns told the Ledger-Enquirer. “He was professional enough to pull in another writer to help him fine-tune it.”

The film sets Peter the Apostle’s biblical journey after Jesus Christ’s death in a modern-day setting. Guyton said the independent project took a decade to fundraise, but the crew shot the movie primarily in Atlanta in 11 days.

“Yesterday Today Forever” released as a full-length feature in 2025, completing Guyton’s journey of nearly two decades. In February, St. Pete’s Black Arts and Film Festival in Florida awarded “Yesterday Today Forever” Best Feature Film and Best Director.

At two points throughout the 18-year journey, Guyton wanted to quit. He credits the “voice of God” for pushing him through. 

“I said I was done,” Guyton recalled in an interview with the Ledger-Enquirer. “And the Lord said, ‘Did I say you were done?’ And I was like, ‘Whoa, OK. I guess I’m getting back on the saddle.’”

Bringing ‘Yesterday Today Forever’ to Columbus

Guyton’s film has screened in several other cities, including Worcester, Massachusetts, and Duluth, Georgia, but the film has solid ties to the Columbus area. In addition to Manns directing the film, several local actors feature in the production, including VJ Roberts and William Oliver.

Roberts had worked with Manns before playing Mother Mary in “Yesterday Today Forever.” Reliving the life of Mary on screen gave Roberts the chance to demonstrate her craft as an actor and think more about her Christian faith.

“Each day we’d do a safety meeting, but we’d also start with prayer,” she told the Ledger-Enquirer. “It was very inspiring.” 

Roberts and her husband, Oz, were instrumental in bringing the film to Columbus. After struggling to find a venue to screen the movie, they finally landed at Rainey-McCullers, a high school their daughter attended for dance. 

The film will screen as part of the city’s fifth annual Juneteenth Jubilee on June 13 at 3 p.m. at Rainey-McCullers. A panel discussion with the cast and crew will follow. General admission tickets cost $17.85 and can be purchased online in advance on Eventbrite.

For Manns, who often has Columbus residents participate as extras, volunteers and “talented” actors in his projects, screening a movie in the Chattahoochee Valley is a special chance to give back to the local community that supported it — something larger productions don’t usually do.

“I appreciate everything that the people of this city put into me and my projects,” Manns said. “I just felt the only right thing to do was to give them an opportunity to come sit and see the movie.”

Timely messages of ‘Yesterday Today Forever’

The film’s title is a nod to the enduring messages the filmmakers are hoping to impart on audiences. 

All lines spoken by Jesus in the film come directly from the Bible, with modern dialogue and 35 original songs building out the rest of the narrative. For Roberts, the film’s emphasis on faith and the words of Jesus remain especially potent during times of political divisiveness and hardship. 

“Nowadays, if we could focus on Jesus Christ and His word and what He says, then we can overcome some of the things that really bother us, or with mental illness, with not being able to talk to each other,” Roberts said.

With “Yesterday Today Forever,” Guyton welcomed the chance to tell a story about the gospel with a primarily African American cast. And with the film’s Columbus debut as part of the city’s Juneteenth celebration, Guyton sees the timing as a chance to reflect on the role Christianity and the Black church played in shaping Black history and culture in the United States.  

“It’s important that we don’t forget where we come from and how we got to where we are today,” Guyton said. “It was because of the Black church.”