South Dakota filmmaker Andrew Kightlinger brings a little Midwest Nice to Hollywood.

Co-workers say he’s kind to the actors, he respects the staff and he brings a sort of optimism to set that would make any other work feel unsettling.

Movie-goers can soon sense the warmth themselves in his latest film, “Lost on a Mountain in Maine,” a PG-rated, family adventure film in cinemas nationwide and at Cinema 8 in Brookings.

“You can be nice, you can be kind, you can be a leader who’s holistic,” said Kightlinger, 38, who grew up in Pierre. “You can surround yourself with people who are better than you and still make beautiful art. You don’t need to be a tyrant to be a director.”

And this is how his home state has gotten to know Kightlinger.

He hit the big screen with his first feature film, “Dust of War,” in 2011, a movie he said he’s proud of. Then, he directed “Tator Tot & Patton” in 2017, an emotional epic filmed entirely in South Dakota (Peep the airport in Pierre and Fernson’s Lion’s Paw Lager).

In between his claims to fame, he was greeting customers, sweeping up popcorn and talking nonstop about movies as the assistant manager for his hometown’s cinema, Theater 123.

“You could always tell the passion Andrew had in this,” said Dick Peterson, who owns Theatre 123 in Pierre and Cinema 8 in Brookings. Each theater is run by Peterson’s State Theatre Co., a three-generation, family-owned business in Brookings. 

Peterson employed Kightlinger for much of his teenage years, in which he started out behind concessions, then the box office and then handling actual reels in the projection booth until he went on to help run the show in his 20s, because he knew too much. 

“It was my dream job,” Kightlinger said.

A national legacy

Despite growing with up with parents who were both scientists, Kightlinger has been relentlessly pursuing film since childhood.

And his parents obliged. They pushed him down their own STEM path, yet they never missed one of their only son’s musicals or one of the movie columns he wrote for his high school newspaper. They also gifted him his own video camera.

“We didn’t have a movie theater in Madagascar,” said his dad, Lon Kightlinger, a former state epidemiologist and now retired volunteer for the Peace Corps. His mother, Mynna Kightlinger, died in 2007. “But we were able to get a few videos and bring out a little TV at home to watch them over and over again on Saturday nights.”

Andrew liked to watch Jim Carrey’s “The Mask,” adventure film “The Black Stallion” and “Homeward Bound,” “the one where Sally Field was the cat,” Lon said.

And how fitting. The story of family pets finding their way back home not only reflects Andrew’s desire to build a career around inspirational storytelling, it’s similar to the plot of “Lost on a Mountain in Maine.” The universal movie is based on the true story of a 12-year-old boy named Donn Fendler, who got lost on Maine’s Mt. Katahdin in the summer of 1939 and survived alone in the wilderness for 10 days.  

“Donn’s story is part of our history,” said producer Ryan Cook, who grew up in Maine and developed a close kinship with Fendler in hopes of sharing his story one day.

Fendler later wrote a book chronicling his fateful feat and spent the rest of his career speaking to schools, churches, Boy Scouts and even to rangers back on Mt. Katahdin, leaving a mark Cook wanted to memorialize.

Fendler died in 2016 at 90 years old.

“Andrew really respected Donn’s legacy,” Cook said. “He went above and beyond in collaborating with us through the whole process. It was always apparent we could trust him.”

Persistence pays off

“Lost on a Mountain in Maine” is produced by Balboa, a film production company led by Sylvester Stallone. Andrew said the “Rocky” actor, who was pretty hands off during the 18 days of filming in 2022, likes to seek work that “highlights human resilience,” the two of them tugging at similar heart strings.

“My goal is, when the credits roll, for people to say, ‘You know what? I should call my parents,’ or, ‘I should call my kid,’ ” Andrew said. “I want everybody feeling some sort of joy or sense of hope. I want them to say, ‘I’ll be better tomorrow.’ That’s what great art does.”

Andrew’s father called it an earnestness to entertain people.

“He’s taught me persistence,” Lon said, who got to be on set while his son filmed “Tator Tot and Patton” around Pierre. While church ladies showed up to feed the film crew every day, Lon let them sleep in his home and made them pancakes every morning.

Lon said he read the “Maine” script with Andrew before he was even hired to direct it, and Andrew would later send him editing snippets and ask for his advice.

“I’m just someone frank who’s not in the industry,” Lon said.

He talked begrudgingly about the whole movie bit, but one can see, there is no greater fan of Andrew than his father.

“He’s been to all my screenings. He’s watched all of my films multiple times,” Andrew said. “And he is definitely my biggest supporter.”

‘A simple message’

Andrew said he reminded himself often while filming on Mt. Katahdin — and also in the Catskills in upstate New York, seeking out homes built in the 1930s for authenticity — that he was making a unique film for kids. While lost, 12-year-old Donn foraged for berries alongside bears, lost his pants in the river and had bugs crawling up his nose, but there was an innocent perseverance that any child may relate to and swell with emotion when faced with it.

“This is a simple message,” Andrew said. “There is so much noise around us, but your family and your friends are your home. That is where your heart is.”

Even though the Great Depression had just ended and World War II was “on the doorstep,” Cook said this is still a relatable story about a family going through hardship. Andrew said the mother is compassionate in the film (played by Caitlin FitzGerald) while the father (Paul Sparks) “kind of goes through a reckoning of his own parenting style.”

“It will make you want to hug your kid,” Cook said.

And if you do, then Andrew has made tangible a dream that everyone around him has seen swirling all along: a special movie maker well on his way.

“Andrew has pursued his dream, and it has come true,” said Peterson, who Andrew credited for first fostering his film education at a small theater not that long ago. “And this is just the start. There was once a young Steven Spielberg who started off making independent films, and look where he is today.”