Some of the most rewarding moments of my career have involved stories that righted a wrong or brought about justice.

Which is why I so enjoyed an event sponsored by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, last week’s screening of a new movie about a pair of Nashville journalists who solve a murder that had gone unprosecuted for 19 years.

The movie, “Deadline,” is described as “inspired by a true story” and is loosely based on the reporting experiences of Mark Ethridge, a former managing editor of The Charlotte Observer.

Mark Ethridge, a Pulitzer-Prize winning newsman, was talking about his book Grievances — based on a series of real-life articles he wrote about a racially motivated murder in a small South Carolina town — at a 40th high school reunion.

His former classmate, Curt Hahn, who runs a Nashville film company, listened intently, and as a socially conscious filmmaker, he naturally began to imagine the arc and possibilities of transforming a cold case and novel into a screenplay, a screenplay into a film, a film into a larger heirloom of the American South.

It begins in Allendale County with the 1970 killing of an 18-year-old black man named Wallace Youmans.

And it ends with a feature film inspired by a novel based on that tragic episode and its aftermath. The novel, "Grievances," was written by a journalist who investigated the case and, many years later, wrote a screenplay.

The journalist-turned-screenwriter, Mark Ethridge, worked at the time for the Charlotte Observer. He would become its managing editor before turning his attention to fiction, history and other interests.

Ethridge, on a 2007 book tour, read from his novel at an Exeter Academy reunion in New Hampshire. Listening was his old schoolmate and movie director Curt Hahn, who was struck by the story and its message of social justice and redemption.

Transcendent’s Deadline is a film that goes by quickly but has much to say while it does. Its smoothly flowing 95 minutes are easy to follow, but the movie doesn’t condescend: it simply respects an audience’s ability to understand by not beating points into the ground.

The picture ably notes Southern faults and uniqueness while also acknowledging our strengths and shared humanity. Perhaps that’s because the film and the novel “Grievances” that inspired it come from the minds and efforts of people who’ve lived in the South, or because those involved know how to tell a cinematic story; most likely it’s a combination of both.