Independent filmmaker Douglas Green’s wife is a social work supervisor for a state government agency in California.

She would tell him about all the crazy things that can happen in a day of the life of a social worker. Some of these stories, especially those about abused children, upset Green.

So he decided to take his wife’s stories and turn them into a film, “The Vigilante.” In that film Joe Estevez, brother of actor Martin Sheen, plays social worker David Harris.

Harris doesn’t think the system is working fast enough to help abused children. So he decides to take justice into his own hands and become the vigilante of the movie title.

“It’s about justice,” Estevez said in an interview about the film that is available on  Youtube. “It’s about bad guys getting what’s coming to them.”

Green, 63, also wrote and directed the film “Baby’s Momma Drama,” and has done music videos for Nigerian singer Douye, R&B group Club Nouveau and others. He gathered the funding to do the almost two-hour movie and shot it in 12 days.

Douglas Green. Photo courtesy of his MySpace page.

Things did not go without a hitch — actor Michael Madsen had planned to play the lead but backed out. Estevez, who was cast in another role, took on the lead part.

Green is now selling the movie online and trying to find a distributor. Despite it all he said he is glad to do a project that allows the public to get a glimpse of the emotionally hard work that social workers do, often with little notice or recognition.

“That’s why we wanted to do the film,” he said. “Nobody was saying anything about it.”

For more information on the film, visit the official Web site of “The Vigilante” by clicking here.