JESUS OF MONTREAL

Nominated this year for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, JESUS OF MONTREAL tells a simple story with complex ramifications. A church in Montreal decides to stage a modern-day version of the Passion Play. Daniel, the production's director who will play Jesus, gathers around him his own group of 'disciples,' actors who believe in the project. Gradually, the experiences of the actors begin to mirror parts of the biblical story as the play, a big hit with the public and the critics, becomes too controversial for the Church to support. In his first film since the hugely successful THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE, director Denys Arcand exposes the hypocrites and bigots, ancient and modern, who have suppressed or distorted Christ's teachings, while alternately skewering various aspects of contemporary life.