PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Paul Schrader, Ethan Hawke and Amanda Seyfried, director and actors of the film First Reformed.
FRED interviews director Paul Schrader and actors Ethan Hawke and Amanda Seyfried, who presented their film First Reformed in competition at the 74th Venice International Film festival. During this brief but intense chat, Schrader tells us that this was the type of spiritual film that he had always wanted to make, ever since he was a film critic, and has never lost interest in. Hawke shares with us a unique approach that helped him prepare for his role, while Seyfried talks about how being pregnant in real life helped her give her performance of a pregnant character an added depth.
First Reformed is a film about spiritual life starring Ethan Hawke as the minister of a small, historical and empty church. An ex-military chaplain, Toller is tortured by the loss of a son he encouraged to enlist in the armed forces. As Toller struggles with his faith, he is further challenged after a young couple, Mary and her radical environmentalist husband Michael, come to him for counselling. Consumed by thoughts that the world is being destroyed by big business and discovering the church’s complicity with unscrupulous corporations, Toller embarks on a perilous selfassigned undertaking with the hope that he may finally restore the faith and purpose he’s been longing for in his mission to right the wrongs done to so many.