As the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approached in 2011, Deborah Puette found herself concerned by a resurgence of hateful rhetoric and violence directed at Muslim Americans. She wrote a short two-person script in which a desperate woman named Grace enters a pawn shop to encounter a Muslim clerk, who is experiencing troubles of his own. A chance good deed from the clerk’s father, who owns the shop, forces both younger people to reconsider their ideas about one another.

With patience, persistence and a helluva lot of networking, Puette was able to turn that short into the new film “Cash for Gold,” premiering this week on digital platforms. Puette not only returns as Grace, she is also the full-length film’s writer and co-director—along with Robert Enriquez, who directed the short of the same name.

Puette is from a small town in northwest Pennsylvania—the kind hollowed out by deindustrialization, its graveyards tragically populated by opioid overdoses. She put much of her own experience into drawing Grace, a single mother struggling to pay the bills. The scene of Grace, desperate for cash, running into the pawn shop served as the launchpad, the “what happens next,” for her screenplay. In the expanded work, that early scene sees Puette encountering Hasan, played by Farshad Farahat (“House of Cards,” “Argo”).

“I had my own experience with financial hardship as a child. My parents really struggled,” Puette said recently on a Zoom call from California. “And it seemed to me that all of these things actually built a really good sort of ‘container’ around which to put my character Grace to explain what she was going through.”

Although Puette has a lengthy acting resume to her credit, including appearances on “True Blood,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Parks and Recreation,” she is also keenly aware the general moviegoing public may not recognize her. However, in developing the feature-length version of “Cash for Gold,” Puette stuck to her guns: She, not a bigger name, would portray Grace. When the stars finally did align for the project to move forward, Puette reiterated this message to producer Ahmos Hassan (“Louie Anderson: Big Underwear”).

“When we met Ahmos, I had been in the position of having people who were interested [but], understandably, [only] if I was not in the lead,” Puette said. “I did say to [Hassan] very bluntly: If you think…you’ll talk me out of playing this part, I have to tell you that’s not going to happen.’ And he was very supportive of that.”

The co-directing assignment came about organically. Enriquez was always to be at the helm, but the deeper into preproduction “Cash for Gold” went, the more Puette realized she had greater input to share. Thus she would wear three hats as writer, lead actress and co-director.

“I had initially felt like it would be way too much of a lift for me having not directed anything prior,” she said. “[Enriquez] and [Hassan] were both very supportive—especially Ahmos, who said at the time that you’d been thinking the same thing.”

“I was going to ask her if she’d consider it as long as Robert had her back and supported” the idea, Hassan said beside her on the Zoom call. And, since moviemaking is necessarily a business venture, he added: “Then the investors were very confident in the project, so they stepped up quickly. We were definitely blessed in how it went.”

Hassan shared that he managed to wrangle a 15-day shoot for “Cash for Gold” in Chisholm, Minnesota, but with a modest budget that required the production team to move swiftly. The state offered production rebates to film in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, and the people of Chisholm graciously opened their homes and businesses, without fee, for the production. The filmmakers also populated the background with local actors from Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Puette, a veteran of Chicago theater, pulled in every favor she knew in the casting process, which contains such recognizable actors as JoBeth Williams (“The Big Chill”) as well as faces you might recognize with names you don’t, including Jeff Kober (“Sons of Anarchy,” “The Walking Dead”), Marcelo Tuber (“Star Trek: The Next Generation,” “Jane the Virgin”), and Lesley Fera (“Pretty Little Liars,” “24”).

“I have this community of incredible actors who…just haven’t gotten the break that puts them in front of a national audience so that we learn their names or their faces,” Puette said. “So we decided pretty early on that we were going to stack this film with those actors that we knew could bring the goods.

“Many of my friends did us real solids by coming in to play small roles that they would never generally entertain. And I loved the idea that we would be surprising audiences with these people who they had never seen.”

In a brilliant marketing plow, Puette set the story at Christmastime. Even though “Cash for Gold” bows in February, its yuletide setting will hopefully have it revisited year after year, perhaps in the same way people already experience “Miracle on 34th Street” or more recent works such as “The Holdovers.”

“It’s a unique Christmas story, and in a way it’s a story that hasn’t been told,” said Hassan of the unique relationship that develops in the film between Grace and Hasan, the fictional son of the pawn shop owner.

However, the story of an unlikely friendship between a Christian woman and a Muslim man in small-town America might be a tough sell given the new administration in Washington—and especially considering the “Muslim ban” of the previous Trump administration. Puette acknowledges the country is dangerously divided, but believes that, in a small way, a film such as “Cash for Gold” might help people see characters like Hasan as not just Muslim but, more critically, as fellow Americans.

“We really are more alike than we are different. Every person is fighting their own struggle,” she said, adding that Grace and Hasan’s inner demons are “like twins.” “And they heal each other because they let that happen. If that’s what people take away from this film, I will be so gratified.”

Hassan, the producer, agrees with that assessment. That search of understanding, he believes, could be accomplished, in the real world, person to person.

“This film is a perfect example of creating something that people ultimately are not only watching a relationship on screen, but they have a relationship with that character,” he said. “This is entertaining, [and if] people connect with it enough, I think it can make a difference.”

By her own admission, Puette’s initial script was a “hard-R,” populated with grit and colorful four-letter words. Though much toned down, she believes the end result is accessible to many more people.

“I’m not looking forward to the struggles we might face as a country with regard to religious discrimination,” she said, “but I am really, really, really grateful that our film is here to maybe counteract that one person at a time.”

“Cash for Gold” is now available for streaming.