Actor Ewan McGregor portrays both Jesus and Lucifer in Rodrigo García’s Last Days in the Desert.
The 98-minute picture is “an imagined chapter from Jesus’ forty days of fasting and praying in the desert,” prior to the beginning of His ministry. On His way out of the open and unforgiving wilderness, Jesus struggles with the devil over the fate of a family in crisis.
The critically acclaimed film, which is being distributed by Broad Green Pictures, first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015.
Variety’s Justin Chang wrote that the movie is “a quietly captivating and remarkably beautiful account of Jesus’ time in the wilderness before the beginning of his ministry.” Chang added:
Deliberately paced, sparely imagined and suffused with mystery, writer-director Rodrigo Garcia’s seventh feature is nonetheless quite lucid and accessible in its themes of empathy, compassion and sacrifice, and grounded by a Christ/Satan dual performance by Ewan McGregor that plays vastly better onscreen than it sounds on paper.
The film was written and directed by García, and also stars Tye Sheridan, Ciarán Hinds, Ayelet Zurer, and Susan Gray.
Last Days in the Desert will make its theatrical debut on May 13.