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Director Steve James (center back) shoots Stevie Fielding, the title character and subject of his

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When Stevie Fielding (left) was young, director Steve James was a mentor to the abandoned kid, wh

Guilt is an emotion that often feels inescapable. We may wish that our past actions had been different, but opportunities to assuage those feelings can seem hopelessly out of reach in the present.

With his new documentary, “Stevie,” opening Friday, director Steve James tackles his own demons head-on and discovers that despite his best efforts, he may never be able to make up for the past.

In the early 1980’s, Steve James, director of the critically acclaimed documentary “Hoop Dreams,” served as a Big Brother to 11-year-old Stevie Fielding in rural Illinois. Abandoned by his mother at an early age, Fielding had been in and out of foster homes and special schools for children with behavioral problems. James was relieved after moving to Chicago in 1985 because he no longer had the responsibility of looking after such a troubled kid.

Ten years later, wrestling with the guilt of having disappeared from Fielding’s life, James reconnected with him and persuaded Fielding to be the subject of a documentary film. It was to be a film that James hoped would help him understand Fielding better, and just might let James off the hook for having abandoned Fielding.

James had hoped to make a simple character study of a troubled man who has yet to escape the ghosts of his childhood. But when Fielding was arrested in 1997 for allegedly molesting a young girl, James found that he could no longer be an objective observer. Emotions ran high as the stakes had suddenly and alarmingly become all too serious.

“At a certain point it just seemed very clear that if I was going to make the film, it had to include me,” James said. “When this crime happened and he was charged, I really found myself being drawn into it, forget the film. I think it does give the audience ammunition to have all kinds of conflicting feelings about me, but that was a risk that I think was important to take.”

Although the film is ostensibly about Fielding and the disturbing turn of events surrounding his arrest, it also follows the lives of Fielding’s family members. By weaving together the stories of Fielding’s mother, sister and girlfriend along with Fielding’s own, James creates a compelling patchwork of the pain and heartbreaking hope that pervade each of their lives. To know Fielding is to worry about him.

“Stevie is a very troubling person, and looked at one way he’s a monster, and looked at another way he’s a child that was doomed to this,” James said.

One of the things that this film does is shatter some of the stereotypes many people have about poor, rural white Americans. Despite Fielding’s behavior, James is able to depict a compassionate family that acts nothing like what we have come to expect based on programs like “Jerry Springer.”

“No matter what class you’re from, or what your background is, families have everything to do with who we are, and who we become. It’s rare to find a family that gives up on each other. They keep trying in some way, and this family does. Even this family is still trying,” James said.

The only person who appears in the film who has yet to see it is Fielding himself. James has made repeated efforts to arrange for Fielding to see it, but has encountered difficulty because Fielding is currently in prison. Officials have rejected James’ requests on the grounds that it would be a special privilege.

“Because he has not been a model prisoner, it would be hard to beg a special case here. If he were a model prisoner I think we’d have a better shot at it,” James said.