\n\t\t\t\t\tHow do you turn a vow of abstinence into the year\u2019s most intoxicating music? Amanda Seyfried makes piety feel dangerous and you might not be ready for the aftershock.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Premiered in Venice, \u201cThe Testament of Ann Lee\u201d turns the life of the Shaker founder into a kinetic musical drama, and it reaches German cinemas on March 12, 2026. Amanda Seyfried anchors the film as a woman whose faith and fury ricochet from industrial Manchester to a raw New York frontier. Director Mona Fastvold threads Shaker hymns through William Rexer\u2019s tactile, timeworn images while Daniel Blumberg\u2019s score builds an insistent pulse. The result is a study of belief, celibacy, and communal longing that feels theatrical in scale yet intimate in its emotional aftershocks.<\/p>\n
An epic that took Venice by storm<\/p>\n
Amanda Seyfried leads The Testament of Ann Lee, a historical epic that\u2019s been humming with a quiet buzz since its debut at the Venice Film Festival. The film welds personal struggle, communal awakening, and a musical pulse into a 130-minute odyssey. Anticipation is high ahead of its German release on March 12, 2026 (following a warm festival run).<\/p>\n
A journey through history and belief<\/p>\n
The narrative follows Ann Lee, the 18th-century founder of the Shaker movement, from Manchester\u2019s mills to New York\u2019s open horizons (the pivotal voyage occurs in 1774). Her faith, reshaped by grief, champions celibacy and gender equality, ideals that cleave through custom and comfort alike. Seyfried grounds these convictions in flesh-and-blood detail, tracing the line between private pain and public revelation with exquisite control.<\/p>\n
The brilliance behind the lens<\/p>\n
Director Mona Fastvold frames belief as texture and motion, stitching in haunting Shaker hymns that composer Daniel Blumberg turns into a rhythmic engine. Cinematographer William Rexer renders timber, cloth, and faces with tactile clarity, so the century\u2019s grit shares the frame with its improbable grandeur. The film\u2019s sweeping ambition echoes Fastvold\u2019s kinship with Brady Corbet on Der Brutalist, yet carves its own path.<\/p>\n
A musical unlike the rest<\/p>\n
This is not a jukebox musical. The songs rise from labor, ritual, and rupture, deepening character rather than decorating the frame. Seyfried\u2019s performance favors restraint over showmanship, closer to the contained intensity of Les Mis\u00e9rables than the sparkle of Mamma Mia!. Melodies function as testimony, letting choruses carry doctrine, doubt, and desire in one breath.<\/p>\n
A visceral experience of utopia and struggle<\/p>\n
What emerges is a story of bodies pushed to their limits and spirits testing the edge of utopia. Fastvold captures the tremor between exhaustion and transcendence, where pounding feet and whispered vows share the same reckoning. The film feels physical\u2014salt, sweat, splinters\u2014yet it hums with mystery; isn\u2019t that the kind of cinema that lingers long after the credits?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How do you turn a vow of abstinence into the year\u2019s most intoxicating music? Amanda Seyfried makes piety…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-347485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}