Corpus Christi

One of the five films nominated for the Best International Feature Film Academy Award this year (it lost, of course, to the juggernaut that was Parasite), Jan Komasa’s thoroughly compelling drama centres on Daniel (a star-making performance from Bartosz Bielenia) as an ex-con who has found God. After he is denied entrance to the seminary by the Catholic powers that be, he decides to anoint himself as a priest—and becomes a much-needed helper to the citizens of a small town who are collectively grieving for the loss of seven of their members in a tragic car accident…

‘A blistering drama, intense, disturbing and inescapably thought-provoking, a film that gets its power from a merging of potent opposites. On one side are all the elements of a classic thriller: agonizing tension, the constant air of potential doom, the sense that anything could happen at any moment to bring on chaos and ruin… But these qualities cluster not around questions of espionage, violent crime or high-stakes robbery but rather ideas that are unapologetically philosophical… What is the nature of sin, of belief? What deep needs does religion fill and how does it go about filling them? Overshadowing everything is the biggest, most provocative question of all: Who gets to speak for God?’—Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times