LAST DAYS IN THE DESERT Special Screenings

LAST DAYS IN THE DESERT is a rich and sublime tale of the nature of faith, doubt and the shifting bonds between fathers and sons, wrapped inside the biblical story of Jesus’ 40 days of prayer in the desert. Writer-director Rodrigo García helms this deeply humane interpretation of the famous parable, rooted in a stunning dual performance by Ewan McGregor as both Jesus and Satan, unable to reach his own Father as he enters the lives of a desert-dwelling family (Ciarán Hinds, Tye Sheridan, Ayelet Zurer) caught in their own struggle with life and death. Alive with humor, compassion and insight, as well as richly textured cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki, LAST DAYS IN THE DESERT challenges cinema’s traditional representations of the life of Jesus while taking its place among the very best of them. It continues a canon of spiritually transcendent filmmaking started by Carl Theodor Dreyer and Robert Bresson. —Cedar Sherbert