The American Film Renaissance festival is playing to sold-out houses in Washington this week, as Rob Gutierrez reported Wednesday:

Jim and Ellen Hubbard, co-founders of the group, say the goal is to "celebrate American values" by "inspiring principles of individual freedom, rugged individualism and the triumph of the human spirit."

It was standing-room only Wednesday night at the Landmark E Street Cinema for the premiere of "The Call of the Entrepreneur," a documentary produced by the Acton Institute that examines the moral basis of capitalism.

Kevin Vance of The Washington Times described the movie last month:

Jay Richards, the director of Acton Media, told an audience at a Heritage Foundation screening that the "point is that human beings create wealth; it's not a zero-sum game."

The film addresses the critics of capitalism while acknowledging that capitalism's defenders are sometimes too theoretical. "The Call of the Entrepreneur" discusses aspects of entrepreneurship in "moral" terms seldom used by libertarians.

"We consider 'God' a public word," Mr. Richards said.

Surely the most affecting part of the documentary -- which is to be broadcast on PBS later this year -- is the testimony of Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai, who escaped Mao's communist China as a 12-year-old in the 1950s. He eventually became a garment salesman. His job took him to New York where, in 1967, he was invited to the home of an elderly Jewish lawyer who handed him a copy of Friedrich Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom."

As Mr. Lai describes receiving the book, he becomes choked up, his eyes brimming with tears as he says, "That book changed my life." And some in the audience were choked up, too.

It may be hard for some people to believe that a discussion of economics can produce an emotionally powerful film experience, but the message and excellent cinematography of "The Call of the Entrepreneur" make it so. Two thumbs up.

-- Robert Stacy McCain, assistant national editor, The Washington Times