Being the only boy in the seventh grade of a Catholic elementary school in Minneapolis more than 30 years ago turned out to be a blessing in disguise for David Fischer.
It eventually led to a feature film, called “Sight,” that his production company is launching in theaters in the Twin Cities and across the country at the end of this month. The film is based on the life of an eye surgeon who fled communist China to study medicine in the United States and whose medical technology has helped save the eyesight of millions.
Raised by a single mom, Fischer’s family moved right before the start of his seventh-grade year, said Fischer, 46, who is a member of St. Ambrose in Woodbury with his wife, Laura, and their nine children. “A couple of days before school started, Mom got me into the closest Catholic school that I could walk to — two blocks away, St. Thomas the Apostle,” he said.
On the first day of school, he made a startling discovery: He was the only boy in either the seventh or eighth grade.
“So, sports, which was my entire identity, was gone,” he said.
That’s when a life-changing pivot took place. With no athletic opportunities for him at school, his mother, Katherine LeDuc, looked for other activities he could try. Inspired by her acting career, she did some digging and learned the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis was holding auditions for the play “A Christmas Carol.” Two weeks after school started, she took Fischer and one of his brothers there on a Saturday for auditions. All three landed a part in the play, which would fill Fischer’s after-school calendar for the next three months.
“I ended up in the Guthrie system,” he said. “It was amazing.”
This child-acting experience beginning at age 12 and lasting through high school is the root of a filmmaking vision that has culminated in him producing “Sight,” scheduled for release May 24, Memorial Day weekend, in theaters in the Twin Cities and nationwide. The movie was filmed in Canada by a production company he and his wife started in 2021 called Open River Entertainment. The film is based on the life of Dr. Ming Wang, a highly gifted eye surgeon who was born in China and now lives in the U.S. Fischer signed a contract with Angel Studios in Utah for distribution of the film. Angel Studios also distributed “Sound of Freedom” and “Cabrini” within the last year.
The path toward becoming a movie producer took hold when Fischer joined a production company called Origin Entertainment in 2011. He did work on several films, including the 2020 theatrical release, “Fatima.” Then, in 2014, his filmmaking aspiration came more into focus and he formed his own company.
“I felt like I was called to stories of conversion,” he said, “following people’s journey, not necessarily just conversion to faith, but transition in life from darkness to light.”
At a social gathering that year in Nashville, Tennessee, he met Wang, the man who seemed to embody the phrase “darkness to light.” By that time, Wang had developed a reputation as an eye surgeon who could restore people’s sight, even in situations that looked hopeless. He was someone people would travel hundreds — or even thousands — of miles to see for treatment.
“He just had this presence about him — bigger than life,” said Fischer, whose primary job is serving as president of St. Paul’s Outreach based in Mendota Heights. “It just felt like everyone in the room wanted to talk to him.”
They met several times after that for dinner. Wang, who is also a musician, invited Fischer to his home. While there, Fischer chose to sing “Amazing Grace.”
It was after that song and during dinner that Fischer learned Wang’s full life story, of living under the oppressive communist regime and its Cultural Revolution that led to thousands of Chinese youth being deported to labor camps. By learning to play an instrument known as the erhu (Chinese violin) and joining a government-sponsored song and dance troupe, Wang managed to avoid deportation. But, 10 years of living under communist tyranny had all but dashed his hopes of ever becoming a physician.
Then, the harsh conditions softened and, through a series of events, Wang left the country for the U.S. in 1982. After studying medicine to become a physician, following in his parents’ footsteps, Wang launched a career that has produced remarkable — some say miraculous — results.
He is credited with restoring the eyesight of millions of people over a 30-year timeframe and has performed more than 55,000 eye surgeries. He is the founding director of the Wang Vision Institute in Nashville, which uses eyesight treatments he has developed to help patients with a variety of eye problems, including loss of vision.
One of those patients helped deepen the Christian faith Wang had embraced after coming to the U.S. In 2006, he learned of a young girl in India, Kajal, whose stepmother had intentionally poured battery acid into her eyes so she could be a more effective street beggar. After discovering Kajal couldn’t sing, her stepmother abandoned her at a train station. Kajal ended up at an orphanage with severe damage to both eyes. She later was flown to the U.S. to see Wang, who felt anguish at her condition and anger toward God for the first time since becoming a Christian. But the kindness and compassion of many people toward Kajal showed him the power of God’s love, which transformed him and further fueled his calling to help those who have lost their sight.
Fischer listened to Wang recount this story, and his fascination with Wang grew to the point of helping Wang write his autobiography, “From Darkness to Sight,” which was published in 2016.
Right after the book came out, Fischer decided he wanted to make Wang’s life story into a movie. He lined up some key people for the project, including a director, Andrew Hyatt, who wrote and directed “Paul, Apostle of Christ” and “Full of Grace.” They were right on the verge of filming when COVID-19 hit in 2020. When they finished the script in the fall of that year, they found their options for a filming location had dwindled to almost none.
“All the places that we planned on filming, including Malaysia, were not available to us anymore,” Fischer said of the lockdowns taking place because of the global pandemic. “The only place left was Vancouver, Canada.”
So, Fischer and his crew made what he called a “risky” decision to film in Canada. It would come at a great social cost.
“I’m leaving my family of eight kids at the time for 100 days,” he said. “It’s three and a half months I had to leave. They couldn’t come and visit me. I could not come home.”
The movie stars Terry Chen, an accomplished Asian actor, as Wang, with the cast also including Greg Kinnear, whose movie credits include “You’ve Got Mail” with Meg Ryan (1998) and “As Good as It Gets” (1997).
Filming started March 15, 2021, and ended six weeks later on April 26. During that time, Fischer was informed by his attorney that the name he had picked for his film company, Ideation, was already spoken for by a Canadian company. That’s when he called Laura to brainstorm for a new name. With news articles about the film set to go to print, they needed to come up with a new name in the next 24 hours.
In his mind, that new name mattered. “This was my first film that I produced from the ground up,” he said. “All the other films I had been a part of, I was developing them, I was helping with scripts. But, I wasn’t the producer.”
He talked with Laura on the phone and asked her to pray about it. She felt the Lord directing her to a Bible verse, Isaiah 41:17, which reads, in part: “I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the bare heights.”
“She said, ‘I think we need to call our company Open River,’” Fischer recalled. He liked the name, but worried that this name, too, might already be taken.
It wasn’t. From there, they did post-production work in 2022 and began showing the movie at film festivals. A major break was winning Best Theatrical Release at the International Christian Visual Media awards in 2022. The movie later won Best Theatrical Premiere at the Heartland Film Festival. That gave the film traction when Fischer started shopping for a distributor. He talked with Angel Studios, which was in the process of releasing “Sound of Freedom.” He closed the deal in January after Angel Studios conducted an audience vote on the film, sending it to the Angel Guild, which has more than 274,000 members.
Although the movie isn’t overtly Catholic, Fischer said it has themes that run parallel to Church teaching. He added that it has the potential to inspire young people to try and make a difference in the world.
“I want to inspire the next generation to consider how the Lord could be a part of their call and charism to do great things in this world,” said Fischer. “If we can inspire the next generation with that … I think this (movie) would be a beautiful, beautiful success.”
For more information about the movie, visit angel.com/movies/sight.
