Writer and director Lee David Zlotoff has fashioned a remarkable movie about healing and the renewal of community in The Spitfire Grill. Percy Talbot arrives in the small Maine town of Gilead after serving five years in prison for manslaughter. She begins working for feisty Hannah, the owner of the Spitfire Grill. Along with a new friend, Shelby, she comes up with a clever scheme that will insure Hannah a stress-free retirement. And as a wounded healer, Percy draws out a mysterious recluse who bears in his psyche burdens as onerous as her own.

The Spitfire Grill is a soul-satisfying movie about the spiritual process of turning pain into joy and bringing new life out of darkness. Alison Elliott gives a luminous performance as Percy. And Ellen Burstyn as Hannah and Marcia Gay Hardin as Shelby are astonishingly good as the two women who enable this miracle worker to transform their small community.