“As a filmmaker, I believe in story. If by wonder, blood, chance, or commitment a tale moves me, I feel compelled to capture it. Great stories are not accidents; they bring aspects of the real into fierce focus. In this way they are truth.” – Greg Morgan

The Substance of Things Hoped For traces Daphne Lessing’s desperate search for the past she cannot recall, the father she never had, and the child she may never know. Morgan's film is an expertly acted and filmed, intelligently conceived, philosophically provocative, and deeply affecting speculative mystery.

Confronted with a diagnosis of a rare form of schizophrenia and a pregnancy she neither planned nor is able to explain, Daphne is forced into a terrible choice: lose her child or lose her mind. Her dilemma: She may avert the disease that will make her go insane by taking a powerful drug; however the drug will abort her unborn baby.

Her conclusion: If the disease is hereditary, she will take the drug and save herself, if not, she will have the healthy child and allow herself to lapse into total insanity. Her problem: She must find the father she has never known (the always-great Ray Wise from Twin Peaks) and deduce his sanity or insanity by testing his blood for the genetic markers or studying his abandoned research in dolphin linguistics — but Daphne’s time is running out.