The New Gospel

Milo Rau brings his documentary The New Gospel to the Schwarzman Centre on Thursday 19 November, with the screening followed by a Q&A. It's a long one — the whole thing runs for two hours and twenty minutes, starting at 19:00 in the cinema.

The film starts with a pretty blunt question: what would Jesus preach in the 21st century? To find an answer, Rau heads to Matera in southern Italy, a town with its own cinematic history as the setting for the Jesus films of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Mel Gibson. From there, the documentary follows Yvan Sagnet, a political activist leading a movement that fights for the rights of migrants facing exploitation and inhumane living conditions. By rooting the story in the lives of people on the margins, Rau returns to the origins of the gospel and reimagines the Passion of Christ through the realities of contemporary Europe.

It's a piece that sits between politics, theatre and cinema, and it doesn't shy away from the heavy stuff — faith, power, poverty and dignity. Rau wrote and directed it himself, with Arne Birkenstock, Olivier Zobrist and Sebastian Lemke producing. The film is rated 12+, so it's one to keep in mind if you're bringing younger ones along.

The Q&A after the screening is where you'll get a chance to pick up the threads and hear more from the people involved. The whole evening runs from 19:00 at the Schwarzman Centre cinema in Oxford, and the documentary itself takes up the bulk of the time.