COLQUITT, Ga. --- The only woman ever to die in Georgia's electric chair -- a victim of racial injustice -- is the focus of a movie that makes its world premiere at the 32nd annual Atlanta Film Festival.

"This is one I had to do first," said veteran actor Ralph Wilcox, 57, who wrote and directed The Lena Baker Story and produced it at a new 22,000 square-foot movie studio in rural southwestern Georgia.

"This film ... dealt with four issues that are really continuing today -- abuse, addiction, the death penalty and the fourth and foremost is our faith," Mr. Wilcox said. "It was her faith that gave Lena her courage and fortitude."

The film is one of more than 150 movies, documentaries and animations selected from about 1,600 submissions to be featured at the festival, April 10-19 at Atlanta's Landmark Midtown Art Cinema, said festival executive director Gabriel Wardell.

"One of the reasons we choose it for opening night is that it is such an accomplished film, especially for a first-time director," said Mr. Wardell. "It's elegantly shot. It really captures the period, but also the beautiful landscape in southwest Georgia -- cotton fields and sunsets. And it also has top-notch performances from a remarkable cast, especially Tichina Arnold in the lead role."

Ms. Arnold is cast in the role of Baker, a black housekeeper in Cuthbert who became romantically involved with an abusive, pistol-toting, gristmill operator, who was white. Baker and the miller, played by actor Peter Coyote, are portrayed as drunks, mired in an interracial relationship that was taboo in the segregated South.

At her trial, Baker, a mother of three, said the miller held her against her will during a drinking binge and that she shot him with his own pistol after he grabbed an iron bar and threatened to hit her.

The jury of 12 white men didn't buy her self-defense argument. During the one-day trial on Aug. 14, 1944, her court-appointed lawyer didn't call a single defense witness.

The jury found her guilty of first-degree murder and a white judge sentenced her to die.

Baker's final words, shortly before her execution at the Reidsville State Penitentiary on March 5, 1945, were, "What I done, I did in self-defense. I have nothing against anyone ... I am ready to meet my God."

An undertaker buried her body behind the small country church near Cuthbert, where she had attended services and was a choir member.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles granted her a pardon in 2005. It did not find her innocent of the crime, but ruled that the decision to deny her clemency in 1945 was a grievous error.

Wilcox, who is black and spent more than six years in Africa producing documentaries on the work of missionaries, said he hopes the movie will give young people a better understanding of history and help them make responsible decisions in a world where atrocities and disasters still occur.

"I didn't want to vilify anyone ... or the system that was bad," he said. "There are the villains, but also the saviors, black and white. It is a lesson in the evolution of how we go through tyranny and struggle. It tells a story about a chapter in our history from which we can evolve."