DK, SE, LT

2016

90 min

In development

Faith

Tro

Directing: Jens Loftager

Synopsis

Faith is a cinematographic voyage into the never-ending mysteries of religion. Society in general and science in particular have developed enormously over the last 2000 years, but one thing is a constant: We believe in God. Or several billions of us do. But is faith a way of engaging in life - or a way of escaping from it? Or do we need a God because we fear death?
The film raises these questions by interweaving two apparently very different stories:
1. We follow an untraditional Danish protestant priest teaching teenagers before their confirmation. He teaches them that believing in themselves is a condition for believing in God. And he asks them the unanswerable questions: Who are you? What is death? What is love?
2. Portraits of three members of the Japanese religious group Hikari no Wa pose the same questions on a completely different background. The three are former members of Aum, the sect that degenerated into a terrorist organization attacking the Tokyo subway in 1995. Today Hikari no wa renounces Aum – even though their leader, Joyu, once was a trusted disciple. We combine the questions about self, love and God and the choices discussed in the Danish class room with the actual choices made by the Hikari no wa members in their Eastern culture where the very notions of self, love and God are different. We learn about the defining and often heartbreaking choices they made to leave their old lives behind. What were and are the reasons behind their choices? What have these choices brought them of joy, insight and suffering? And have they brought them closer to “God”?
As a subplot and a frame for the film we depict the very last letters (about faith) from German soldiers confronted with certain death in Stalingrad 1943. And we integrate the position of the world leading Polish astrophysicist and cosmologist Michał Heller who combines his studies of Big Bang theories with being a priest in the Catholic Church.
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