''The Brand New Testament'' (french: Le Tout Nouveau Testament) is a 2015

fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving Magic (supernatural), magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy ...

dark comedy Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, or gallows humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discus ...

film written, produced, and directed by

Jaco Van Dormael Jaco Van Dormael (born 9 February 1957) is a Belgian film director, screenwriter and playwright. His films especially focus on a respectful and sympathetic portrayal of people with mental and physical disabilities. Van Dormael spent his childh ...

. It is a co-production among Belgium, France, and Luxembourg. The film was screened at the

Directors' Fortnight The Directors' Fortnight (french: Quinzaine des Réalisateurs) is an independent selection of the Cannes Film Festival. It was started in 1969 by the French Directors Guild after the events of May 1968 resulted in cancellation of the Cannes festiv ...

section at the

2015 Cannes Film Festival The 68th Cannes Film Festival was held from 13 to 24 May 2015. Joel and Ethan Coen were the Presidents of the Jury for the main competition. It was the first time that two people chaired the jury. Since the Coen brothers each received a separate ...

. It was selected as the Belgian entry for the

Best Foreign Language Film This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards. Best Actor/Best Actress *See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...

at the

88th Academy Awards The 88th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 2015 and took place on February 28, 2016, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, 5:30 p.m. PST. Du ...

, making the December shortlist of nine films, but was not nominated. ''The Brand New Testament'' received ten nominations at the

6th Magritte Awards The 6th Magritte Awards ceremony, presented by the Académie André Delvaux, honored the best films of 2015 in Belgium and took place on February 6, 2016, at the Square in the historic site of Mont des Arts, Brussels beginning at 8:00 p.m. CE ...

, winning four awards, including

Best Film This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards. Best Actor/Best Actress *See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...

and

Best Director Best Director is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organizations, festivals, and people's awards. It may refer to: Film awards * AACTA Award for Best Direction * Academy Award for Best Director * BA ...

for Van Dormael. The film has become a

cult film A cult film or cult movie, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a cult following. Cult films are known for their dedicated, passionate fanbase which forms an elaborate subculture, members of which engage ...

Plot

God lives in an apartment in

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

which he shares with his meek wife and his 10-year-old daughter Ea, to whom he is emotionally and physically abusive. God is a grumpy sadist who created humankind specifically to have something to torment. He manipulates reality via a personal computer which he forbids his family from accessing. One day, Ea sneaks into his office and discovers how he has been mistreating humans. This enrages God who then whips Ea with his belt. Ea decides to rebel against her father. She steals the key to His office and accesses the scheduled dates of death of every human in the world and releases the information to them via their portable telephones. Everyone with a cell phone receives a text message informing them exactly when they will die. Ea then locks God's computer and escapes from the apartment through a washing machine which provides a tunnel to the outside world. Wandering the streets of Brussels, Ea decides to follow in the footsteps of her brother

Jesus Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...

and write a Brand New Testament as her contribution to the human race. She selects six apostles to narrate their life stories. She first enlists a homeless man, Victor, to be her scribe, since she cannot write well. The first apostle is a reclusive woman who lost her left arm in an accident and feels nobody will love her. The second is a man who hates his work and his life, who has decided to never move from a bench in the park now that he knows the date of his death. Ea translates to allow him to converse with a bird. This induces him to follow a flock of birds to the North Pole. The third apostle is a sexually frustrated man who is awkward with women and remains lovesick for a German girl he met once as a boy. With Ea's encouragement, he becomes a voice actor for porn movies, where he encounters and establishes a relationship with his lifelong fixation. The fourth apostle is a man who is fascinated with death and killing. He purchases a rifle and shoots people knowing that, since all death dates are already predetermined, they can not be his responsibility. Ea prods him to shoot a woman, the first apostle. He hits her in her prosthetic arm. Believing this to be a divine signal, he courts the woman and they establish a relationship, and he learns to embrace life instead of death. The fifth apostle is an elderly woman trapped in a loveless marriage, especially now that her husband knows he will outlive her by many years. Ea persuades her to cheat on her husband. She has sex with a young male prostitute, and then forms a love relationship with a gorilla. The gorilla scares her husband away, to her delight. The sixth apostle is a sickly boy who, with only days left to live, decides to live them as a girl. Ea encourages her to live each day as the equivalent of one month. God is horrified when he discovers what Ea has done and that he can no longer torment humans. Locked out of his computer, he is powerless. He leaves the apartment using the chute in the laundry room, and in the real world he suffers all the mistreatment and frustrations he created for mankind. He is assaulted by everyone he meets. He discovers to his horror that the tunnel to his apartment has disappeared and he is trapped on Earth powerless and alone. He takes shelter in a church, where his outrageous criticism of his son Jesus Christ provokes a charitable priest into beating him senseless and eventually deporting him to

Uzbekistan Uzbekistan (, ; uz, Ozbekiston, italic=yes / , ; russian: Узбекистан), officially the Republic of Uzbekistan ( uz, Ozbekiston Respublikasi, italic=yes / ; russian: Республика Узбекистан), is a doubly landlocked cou ...

with a group of illegal immigrants. Ea and her apostles go to the seaside where hundreds of people have gathered to spend the last hours of their lives. An airplane, which happens to be carrying God under police escort, falls out of the sky and threatens to crash onto the beach and kill everyone. At the last moment, however, God's wife realizes that the number of apostles has grown to 18, her favorite number, explores her husband's work space, unwittingly restarts his computer, and begins to configure a new life for mankind. She deletes the messages that notified people of their death date. The airplane regains altitude and a new creation is born under a flower-filled sky. Victor publishes the Brand New Testament which becomes a bestseller and catapults him out of hopeless poverty into a whole new life of fame and fortune. God reaches Uzbekistan where he works on an assembly line manufacturing washing machines. He keeps on searching without success for the washing machine with the escape hatch that will take him back to his apartment.

Cast

François Damiens François Georges Henri Marie Ghislain Joseph Damiens (; born 17 January 1973) is a Belgian actor. Career He has appeared in more than fifty films since 2000. He started out doing hidden camera videos in the 90s and became widely popular in B ...

as François (fourth apostle) * Didier De Neck as Jean-Claude (second apostle) *

Catherine Deneuve Catherine Fabienne Dorléac (born 22 October 1943), known professionally as Catherine Deneuve (, , ), is a French actress as well as an occasional singer, model, and producer, considered one of the greatest European actresses. She gained recogni ...

as Martine (fifth apostle) *

Pascal Duquenne Pascal Duquenne (born 8 August 1970) is a Belgian actor. He shared the Best Actor Award in the 1996 Cannes Film Festival for his performance as Georges in the movie '' The Eighth Day'', with Daniel Auteuil, who played Harry. He lives in Brussels ...

as Georges * Romain Gelin as Willy (sixth apostle) * Pili Groyne as God's daughter, Ea *

Johan Heldenbergh Johan Heldenbergh (born 9 February 1967) is a Belgian actor, playwright, screenwriter, theatre director and film director. He gained international fame by starring in films, including ''A Day in a Life'' (2007), '' Moscow, Belgium'' (2008), '' T ...

as The priest * Serge Larivière as Marc (third apostle) *

Johan Leysen Johan Leysen (19 February 1950 – 30 March 2023) was a Belgian actor. He appeared in more than 130 films and television shows from 1977. He starred in the film '' De grens'', which was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1984 Canne ...

as Martine's husband * Marco Lorenzini as Victor (the scribe) *

Yolande Moreau Yolande Moreau (born 27 February 1953) is a Belgian comedian, actress, film director and screenwriter. She has won three César Awards from four nominations. Career She made her cinematic debut with director Agnès Varda in two movies: Sept piè ...

as God's wife *

David Murgia David Murgia (born 16 March 1988) is a Belgian actor. He started his career in theatre in the early 2000s and has since gone on to appear in films. Theater Filmography References External links * 1988 births 20th-century Belgian ma ...

Jesus Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...

Benoît Poelvoorde Benoît Poelvoorde (, ; born 22 September 1964) is a Belgian actor and comedian. Early life His mother was a grocer and his father a driver, who died when Poelvoorde was still a minor. He attended the Jesuit Boarding School of Godinne before ...

as God * Laura Verlinden as Aurélie (first apostle)

Reception

''The Brand New Testament'' received generally favorable reviews from film critics. On

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 82%, based on 74 reviews with an average rating of 7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "''The Brand New Testament'' takes a surreal, subversive, and funny look at Biblical themes through a modern — and refreshingly original — lens." At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the film received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 70 out of 100, based on 17 reviews from mainstream critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Accolades

References

External links