The cast also includes Joshua Leonard, John Hawkes, Donna Murphy, Norbert Leo Butz, and Bill Irwin.

[3] It screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival on June 25, 2011, and received a limited release in the United States on August 26, 2011, by Sony Pictures Classics.

The community prays for her, and she survives a risky surgery, but suffers brain damage that leaves her confined to a wheelchair and unable to speak.

She grabs the microphone and gives a speech in front of the pastor and the entire community, talking about her life experience with faith, her doubts, and what it means to stand on "higher ground".

[5] Higher Ground is loosely based on the memoir This Dark World by author Carolyn S. Briggs, who co-wrote the screenplay with Tim Metcalfe.

[7] In June 2010, it was reported that Farmiga would also be starring in the film, and that she would be joined in the cast by Joshua Leonard, Norbert Leo Butz, John Hawkes, Dagmara Domińczyk, Bill Irwin, and Donna Murphy.

[14] Shortly after, Sony Pictures Classics acquired North American, Australian and New Zealand distribution rights to the film; the company later bought all rights for France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Austria, the Benelux, Scandinavia, Italy, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia as well.

The critical consensus reads, "With Higher Ground, star and debuting director Vera Farmiga takes viewers on a challenging spiritual journey whose missteps are easily overcome by its many rich rewards.

[26] A. O. Scott of The New York Times also gave a positive review, writing, "There is something remarkable – you might even say miraculous – about the way Higher Ground makes its gentle, thoughtful way across the burned-over terrain of the American culture wars.

The film, directed with disarming grace and sharp intelligence by Vera Farmiga (who also stars in it), is about the conflict between skepticism and religious faith, but it does not treat that battle as an either/or, winner-take-all proposition.

Movies about belief and believers frequently succumb to woozy piety or brittle contempt, but Higher Ground belongs, along with Robert Duvall's The Apostle and Michael Tolkin's under appreciated Rapture among the elect.

"[27] Roger Ebert gave the film a positive review, awarding it 3.5 stars out of 4, writing, "Vera Farmiga's Higher Ground is the life story of a woman who grows into, and out of, Christianity.

In a world where believers and agnostics are polarized and hold simplified ideas about each other, it takes a step back and sees faith as a series of choices that should be freely made.

"[28] David Edelstein of Vulture wrote, "Actress Vera Farmiga's directing debut, the religious drama Higher Ground, is amazingly graceful.

The movie centers on Corinne (played by Farmiga), who joins and, a decade later, breaks away from a fundamentalist religious order, but the tone isn't irreverent, exactly.

In the memoir on which it's based, This Dark World, Carolyn S. Briggs (who co-wrote the screenplay with Tim Metcalfe) rejects God but can't stop longing for Him.

And Farmiga frames the film version as a kind of love story, beginning with Corinne opening her eyes underwater, at the moment of her baptism, seeing men smiling down like heaven's welcoming committee.