2015 ‘Le tout nouveau testament’ Directed by Jaco Van Dormael
God lives in Brussels. On Earth though, God is a coward, with pathetical morals and being odious with his family. His daughter, Ea, is bored at home and can't stand being locked up in a small apartment in ordinary Brussels, until the day she decides to revolt against her dad...
Pili Groyne Benoît Poelvoorde Yolande Moreau Catherine Deneuve François Damiens Serge Larivière Didier De Neck Laura Verlinden Romain Gelin Marco Lorenzini Johan Heldenbergh Anna Tenta David Murgia Gaspard Pauwels Bilal Aya Johan Leysen Dominique Abel Lola Pauwels Sandrine Laroche Louis Durant Jean Luc Piraux Anne-Pascale Clairembourg Alice van Dormael Caroline Lambert Jérôme Varanfrain Aïssatou Diop Armand Van Dormael Viviane de Muynck Pascal Duquenne Show All…
RTBF Caviar Le Pacte Climax Films OCS Centre du Cinéma et de l'Audiovisuel de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles VOO Le Tax Shelter du Gouvernement Fédéral de Belgique Casa Kafka Pictures BNP Paribas Fortis Orange Studio Fonds National de Soutien à la Production Audiovisuelle du Luxembourg BeTV La Wallonie Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds Juliette Films Terra Incognita Films Après le Déluge Belga Productions Screen Flanders Belga Films Fund
O Novíssimo Testamento, Yeni Ahit, le tout nouveau testament, Det helt nya testamentet, Новітній заповіт, 이웃집에 신이 산다, God Bestaat en Hij Woont in Brussel, Das brandneue Testament
God, as it happens, is real and lives in Brussels in an apartment building from which he created the world. He’s also a total asshole, inflicting nearly as much misery on his wife and young daughter Ea as he does on humanity on a daily basis. Ea finally decides to escape like her older brother JC. But first she uses her dad’s computer to tell everyone on Earth when they’re going to die, which ruins his entire system. Ea recruits a scribe—a dyslexic homeless man—and sets out to find six apostles and write a new book of the bible about their lives. THE BRAND NEW TESTAMENT is one of the best, most original films I’ve seen this year. It’s poignant,…
God is real...and he lives in Brussels...
The Brand New Testament is my sort of film. The story, which follows the daughter of God as she searches for six new apostles around Belgium after releasing the death dates of every person on Earth and running away from home, it’s completely original and unpredictable. It’s filled with creative directing and scattered with smart humour, black comedy and tender moments. It poses thought provoking questions about God, religions, humanity and our general attitudes towards life. For me it was one of those films that made me take a step back and appreciate not just what I have but everything around me. A reminder to lift my eyes from the ground every once in a while and look to the sky. It’s the first film I’ve seen from Belgium and hopefully not my last.
It was my turn to choose a film to watch with my nearly sixteen year old daughter, so I thought I’d try her with Amelie, only for it to be rejected by her mother as being “entirely inappropriate”. I failed to see how a film that is loved by so many young women (and men) could be such a poor choice, but I’m a guest in the house and I accepted her decision without argument. However, in what turned out to be an unintentional escalation of the conflict, I instead went on and selected The Brand New Testament.
I remember enjoying Jaco Van Dormael’s film when I saw it on its Festival run. I recalled it had a plucky young heroine,…
He said... My dear little girl, life is like a skating rink... Lots of people fall down!
Gott lebt und arbeitet mit seiner Familie (duckmäuserisch die Haus-Frau, trotzig die 10-jährige Tochter und der nie anwesende Sohn JC;) in einer Brüsseler 3-Zimmer Wohnung.
Und aus Sicht der nun, gegen den jähzornigen und nur am PC arbeitenden Vater, rebellierenden Tochter Ea gibt's in biblische Kapitel unterteilt, eine phantasievolle Außenseiter-/ Coming-of-Age-Geschichte voller eigenwilliger und sympathischer Ideen und Figuren. Denn für das brandneue Testament werden noch ein paar sehr besondere Apostel gebraucht.
Mit kreativer bis zur Perfektion reichender Kameraarbeit - ich setze hier einmal Trier und Snyder als meinen Maßstab (mit einer gefühlt direkt musikalischen Antichrist-Referenz sogar noch mehr:) - und dem tollen Color…
And here the director introduces you to the "revolutionary cinema" expression , a hundred books won't be enough to describe how creative this director really is , a great original movie with a satirical vibe which answers a question that is more controversial than Parasite's quality and that question is ("what the actual fuck??!!!!")
And now for something completely different!!
... would be a perfect alternative title for this film.
HOLY SHIT!!! First Jaco van Dermael made Mr. Nobody and now this!
This film literally has everything! It not only tells about christianity, which you would expect considering it tells of God ( and they do portray him as the God of christianity) and his rebellious daughter, but it hints at so many other things in this world, all kinds of different religions, different believes and it even goes to great lengths to show the day-to-day believes of some (at first) random inhabitants of Brussels. Next to the references to real life their are also a lot of references to different films that at…
So lazy. So empty. So dumb. So conformist and pretentious. So lame and dishonest in it's would be-character portraits and so shameless in its worthless world-building and so amazingly annoying if you have the slightest demand on its concepts being remotely cohesive. The movie is just all over the place, nothing makes sense and for every arbitrary plot turn there's an unimaginative plot point and a exposition instead of storytelling - and all the time it's smug and self-important, like a Justin Bieber fan who says he knows everything about music but has never heard of Beethoven. This is such a narcissistic showcase of an idea nobody had the slightest idea what to make of. But they did it. And smiled.
I really hate it.
honestly rude of her to make him write the new testament but not even offer that he could be one of the apostles
Deneuvember 2021 challenge Film 7
Decade 2010s
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There are lots of comedies about God interacting with mortals and they're mostly bad, or at least very silly. Not The Brand New Testament. Although it's hilariously absurd at times, it's also also a very clever satire/coming of age/family drama with Jesus' sister as the protagonist.
Jesus asks his sister to find six new apostles to join the others. One of them is Catherine Deneuve who ends up with a gorilla for a boyfriend. An actual gorilla. Yeah, that's the sort of film this is. Some Christians would be appalled. God is a tyrannical patriarchal bully, but the film, although decidedly irreverent is only a poke, not a lambaste. It goes into some existential territory, such as what would happen if we all knew the exact date and time of our deaths.
