Anna Maria (Maria Hofstätter) spends her days worshipping Christ by preaching to immigrants in the suburbs in the daytime and flagellating herself in the evenings; then she gets an unexpected visit. The director’s second chapter in his Paradise trilogy paints an equally depressing (and repetitious) portrait of a middle-aged woman as the first one. Ulrich Seidl suffers from bad experiences of Catholicism in his youth, which is why also we need to suffer through endless examples of a fanatic’s life. Hofstätter is impressive, but we learn much too little about the lead characters.
2012-Austria-Germany-France. 115 min. Color. Directed by Ulrich Seidl. Cast: Maria Hofstätter (Anna Maria), Nabil Saleh (Nabil), René Rupnik (Rupnik), Natalya Baranova.
Trivia: Original title: Paradies: Glaube. The other two films in the trilogy are Paradise: Love (2012) and Paradise: Hope (2013).
European Film Awards: Best Sound Designer. Venice: Special Jury Prize.