Amanda Seyfried‘s sweeping musical drama “The Testomony of Ann Lee” has discovered distribution after its Venice movie competition premiere, the place it was embraced with a rousing 15-minute standing ovation. Searchlight Photos has acquired rights for North America and most worldwide territories with plans to launch the film theatrically in 2025.
Directed by Mona Fastvold, “The Testomony of Ann Lee” follows Seyfried because the title character, the founding chief of the Shakers, a radical non secular second that started within the late 1700s. Lee, one of many few feminine non secular leaders of the 18th century, and her followers have been recognized for worshipping by way of ecstatic music and motion. Thomasin McKenzie, Lewis Pullman, Stacy Martin, Tim Blake Nelson, Christopher Abbott and Matthew Beard additionally star within the movie.
“I used to be raised in a secular family, and but Ann Lee’s prophecies — nonetheless implausible — moved me deeply. Not as a result of I share her religion, however as a result of I acknowledge in her a craving for justice, transcendence and communal grace,” Fastvold mentioned in an announcement. “Her radical pursuit of a self- normal utopia speaks to the artistic impulse on the coronary heart of all inventive endeavor: the pressing must form the world anew.”
In a constructive overview for Selection, critic Man Lodge praised the movie’s “enthralling, borderline-absurd musical numbers” and the efficiency of the main girl. “On paper, this may all sound fairly cold and conceptual,” he wrote. “In observe, it has an earnest, full-hearted sweep, largely because of a efficiency of redoubtable dedication and nerve-deep feeling by Amanda Seyfried — removed from the musical terrain of both “Mamma Mia!” or “Les Misérables,” however totally in control of her presents — within the title position.”
Fastvold co-wrote “The Testomony of Ann Lee” together with her companion Brady Corbet. The 2 most not too long ago penned “The Brutalist,” directed by Corbet. That movie, a three-hour and 30-minute epic, was acquired by A24 out of final yr’s Venice and scored 10 Oscar nominations along with $50 million on the international field workplace. Fastvold’s different movies embrace 2014’s “The Sleepwalker” and 2020’s “The World to Come.”
In the course of the official press convention for “The Testomony of Ann Lee,” Fastvold and Corbet obtained candid concerning the challenges of financing the impartial movie for simply $10 million. The story focuses on a lesser-known chapter of American historical past, which implies the film wasn’t the obvious promote to financiers.
“It was fairly a feat,” Corbet mentioned. “As you possibly can think about, the elevator pitch for ‘Shaker musical’ wasn’t the simplest to get off the bottom.”
Regardless of a lean price range (main studio motion pictures can value not less than 5 instances as a lot), Fastvold managed to create huge set items and craft elaborate musical numbers to deliver Ann Lee’s story to the massive display.
“I believed Ann Lee deserved one thing grandiose and fantastic,” mentioned Fastvold. “What number of tales have we seen about male icons on a grand scale, many times and once more? Can we not see one story a few lady like this?”
