Milo Rau

The Swiss director who has directed NTGent in recent years offers a film that aims to be a kind of new gospel of modern times. The director documents the daily life of migrants living in Europe, in a reinterpretation of the story of Christ, mixed with a real portrait of the exploitation suffered by migrants in Europe. Reality and fiction are mixed in a film that features non-professional actors, a series of migrants. The protagonist of The New Gospel is the Cameroonian activist Yvan Sagnet, the first black Jesus in European film history. In 2011, he himself works on a tomato farm when he starts to revolt against the exploitation of rural workers in the south of Italy. For this film, he revisits the largest refugee camp near Matera, the city in the south of Italy where Pier Paolo Pasolini and Mel Gibson previously shot their films on the life of Jesus. Maia Morgenstern plays Mother Mary and among the actors is as well Enrique Irazoqui, who was the Christ of The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, by Pier Paolo Passolini.

The initiative Resistance Now!, by the Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) | Free Republic of Vienna, Europes biggest cross-over festival held between May and June, is touring throughout Europe and beyond with performances and debates in the aim to resist against the destruction of diverse cultures, the disintegration of civil society, and setbacks in freedoms. Closely involved in the proposal, director Milo Rau denounces, for example, the situation of culture in regimes such as Hungary, Slovakia, or Serbia, but also the discriminations and injustices experienced everywhere and all circumstances in which freedom is threatened.

Artistic credits

Director and script: Milo Rau
Music: Vinicio Capossela, Elia Rediger
Production: Milo Rau/IIPM & Fruitmarket & Langfilm

 

A collaboration between: Grec 2025 Festival de Barcelona, D'A - Festival de Cinema de Barcelona, and CCCB