As actress and as a writer-director-editor Katherine Griffin displays much promise on either side of the camera in "The Innocents," a small-town period piece that deals with the past’s grip on the present. Set in a Midwestern town in the summer of 1961, it focuses on a friendship that unexpectedly blossoms with the advent of high school graduation between the class valedictorian, the lovely and self possessed Jane (Kama Lee), eager to enter Radcliff in the fall and resented for her natural superiority, and Maggie (Griffin), a kindly farm girl with a brutal father.

In the course of the summer Jane, with Maggie’s support, investigates a secret chapter in her late mother’s life while Maggie’s impact upon Jane opens up to her an entire world of possibilities she had always believed to be beyond her. "The Innocents" is a captivating film in which two young women expand their horizons in ways they had never imagined.