While working on her 2020 Venice competition entry The World to Come, writer-director Mona Fastvold was researching religious hymns from the Upstate New York area and came across the worship songs of the Shaker movement. Intrigued by the devotion and the context around the sect’s female leader – Mother Ann Lee – Fastvold started developing her third feature as a director, which is now The Testament of Ann Lee, world-premiering at Venice once again, in competition. True to its namesake and the chanting-dancing Shaker prayers, the film is a musical: its songs have been adapted from the aforementioned hymns and composed by Oscar winner Daniel Blumberg, with choreography by Celia Rowlson Hall (Vox Lux).

Mamma Mia! [+lee también:
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The original script, co-written by Fastvold and her usual collaborator Brady Corbet (The Brutalist [+lee también:
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Blumberg’s songs are centred on Seyfried’s ringing soprano, and even when her voice thins and flutters at the highest octaves, there is something truly angelic to its resonance. The flipside of that is that other actors pale in comparison, since the musical numbers she’s given are rich in inflections, which lend themselves perfectly to her soaring timbre. The Testament of Ann Lee is a meticulously crafted film about faith, yet it remains self-contained as a story; the script never veers into overly praising Mother Ann as a feminist icon ahead of her time, and it doesn’t make a huge deal out of her understanding of gender and racial equality in 18th-century England and colonial America. Instead, it keeps just the right amount of distance to grant us the joy and delight of storytelling – thoroughly researched, rendered and delivered with the convictions of the cinema “to come”.

The Testament of Ann Lee was produced by Kaplan Morrison (USA) and Intake Films (UK), in co-production with Hungary’s Proton Cinema. Charades handles its world sales.