13/08/2026 - Austrian director Peter Brunner gives a voice to those silenced by a greedy, ruthless consumer society that has lost all trace of humanity

Austrian director Peter Brunner returns to the Locarno Film Festival, where, in 2021, he unveiled Luzifer (in the International Competition), to present his latest feature, Down the Arm of God. Screened on the immense Piazza Grande screen, the film is every bit as powerful and moving as its predecessor, although this time, the protagonist’s religious fervour comes closer to a kind of Franciscan humanism than to mystical delirium. For his latest effort, the director once again teams up with US actor Caleb Landry Jones, whom he previously directed in the experimental drama To the Night. His majestic performance transforms Down the Arm of God into one of those movies whose magnetic power extends beyond the screen, as though reality were taking possession of fiction, and as though the protagonist’s gaze could see right through us.

During a freezing winter that seems never-ending, a young pastor (Landry Jones), newly arrived in a small Texas town, decides to help a group of homeless people who have set up camp on the outskirts. His mission is to save them from an imminent death caused not only by the cold, but also by the precarious conditions in which they are forced to live. Despite his fierce determination, the young pastor comes up against the resistance and opposition of his congregation, terrified at the prospect of sharing their living space with strangers they consider dangerous. The prejudices harboured by the “locals” towards the homeless erupt violently into the open, revealing their grotesque side. It matters little that these people need help: the members of the congregation are unwilling to allow their lives to be tainted by a precarity they would rather keep at a safe distance. The young pastor seeks help outside the town, turning to organisations that no longer know what to do, overwhelmed by requests they are increasingly unable to meet. Suffocated by his dependence on a fragile system of assistance that the government has no intention of supporting, the film’s protagonist is forced to contend with failures that have become systemic and cries for help that fall on deaf ears.

Co-written by Brunner and Landry Jones, who spent around five years working on the project with people experiencing homelessness in Texas, Down the Arm of God is a necessary, profoundly moving film that reflects on this terrible crisis not through statistics, but through the concrete experiences of those directly affected. The movie draws on interviews and first-hand testimonies from these individuals, human beings who resemble wounded animals, ghosts desperately searching for a body to curl up inside, where they can rest, keep warm and finally feel protected.

These people, to whom Brunner and Landry Jones give both a voice and a physical presence, are involved in the film as subjects, but also, and above all, as the actors and actresses in their own personal stories. They speak in the first person about the difficulties they face on a daily basis, but also about their scars and their struggles to keep alive a humanity that society is intent on stripping away from them. Their life experiences contribute authentically to the creation of the film, allowing them to tell their stories and to describe themselves, to exist in a world that regards them as human waste. In this sense, the movie becomes a cinematic act of collaboration and denunciation, brimming with empathy and rebellion.

Thanks to its scant, poetic narrative and settings that evoke the archaic mysticism of Nick Cave’s And the Ass Saw the Angel, Down the Arm of God challenges the stigma suffocating people experiencing homelessness, who are viewed as personal failures, rather than as the victims of a systemic problem, of a society that would rather see them disappear for good.

Down the Arm of God was produced by EuropaCorp (France) and Roosevelt Film Lab (USA), with international sales handled by Kinology.

(Translated from Italian)