Agnus Dei

The young girl Johanne is left by her mother at a solemn convent school. The school is a strange world to her, and when she feels unable to comply with the demands of faith she faces a difficult decision.

Jesús was sexually abused by a priest when he was 11 years old. As an adult, he decided not only to denounce his aggressor, but also to find him and confront him. This is a story that reveals the impunity of the Catholic Church for acts of pederasty committed by some of its members, while Jesús Romero offers the testimony of his life.

Allegory of the suppression of the 1919 revolution and the advent of fascism in Hungary; in the countryside, a unit of the revolutionary army spares the life of father Vargha, a fanatical priest. He comes back and leads massacres. A new force, represented by Feher, apparently avenges the people, but only to impose a different, more refined and effective kind of repression.

Based on a true story, Agnus Dei is a kind of Oedipus of our days. Peter must find his way to redemption. But the past will make itself known and fate sparingly gives mercy. Can he save himself, or even be saved at all?

A deer faces its double. The bodies collide, moving forwards and backwards in turn, in vain. Geese, at first feverish, then carried away by violence, will transform this confrontation into a gentler dance.

Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) provides a highly emotive musical backdrop for this stripped back film, which is both epic and intimate. Featuring Royal Ballet First Artist Leo Dixon, this poetic solo was captured on the main stage of the Royal Opera House during lockdown. The hauntingly empty auditorium and stage provide a stunning backdrop to Wainwright's music and Pita's movement.

To the child mind, the transformative sacrificial power of "O, Lamb of God" is a daily manifestation - not as an adult shift-of-interest, but rather as ritual magic in which a toy train ("-of-thought," an adult might say) becomes medium of shifts-of-scene, soforth, wherein an elephantine shape transforms to a more "real" (i.e., less metaphorical) train, in sacrifice of transformative elephant, so on-&-on. An earlier film, THE MACHINE OF EDEN, is of some similar construct (as is a good deal of western painting) in its insistence upon contemporary mise-en-scene as grounds for Biblical lore.

An optical Jesus.

Poland, 1945. Mathilde, a young French Red Cross doctor, is on a mission to help the war survivors. When a nun seeks for her help, she is brought to a convent where several pregnant sisters are hiding, unable to reconcile their faith with their pregnancy. Mathilde becomes their only hope.

The kidnapping 77-year-old man in Argentina forces his daughter to return to Buenos Aires after years of exile abroad.