The film adaptation of Peter Ferry's award-winning novel "Old Heart" will screen at the Gorton Center on Sunday, July 12, at 2 p.m., bringing the late Lake Forest High School English teacher's story back to the community where he spent 27 years in the classroom.

Ferry, who died September 17, 2024, at age 77 after a battle with Merkel cell carcinoma, taught generations of LFHS students, including bestselling author Dave Eggers and actor Vince Vaughn. His 2015 novel won the Chicago Writers Association Novel of the Year award.

Actor and author Gary Houston, managing editor of the Chicago Quarterly Review and Ferry's close friend, will introduce the film. A panel discussion follows, featuring co-director Kirk Wahamaki, producer and screenwriter Roger Rapoport, and one of the film's costars. Organizers say former students and LFHS faculty colleagues plan to attend.

"Kids don't let you get a big head," Ferry told the Chicago Tribune in 2015. "It's impossible to be full of yourself if you're in a classroom with kids."

The film, which has won eight best-feature awards at festivals in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Poland, and India, tells the story of an elderly Black American veteran who rejects his family's plan to move him into assisted living and secretly flies to Amsterdam to find his long-ago wartime love, a Jewish translator he helped liberate in the fall of 1944. It was shot in West Michigan and the Dutch community of Veldhoven.

Ferry drew on his own connection to the Netherlands. He was a Fulbright Exchange teacher there in 1991–1992 and ran a student exchange program between LFHS and a Dutch high school for 16 years.

The event runs from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and is hosted by the Heartland Independent Film and Drama Forum. Tickets are $15 for adults and $7.50 for those under 18 at early-bird pricing; prices increase the day of the event. The Gorton Center is at 400 East Illinois Road, Lake Forest. Tickets are available at gortoncenter.org.