Film’s Query: Would Jesus Stand With Migrants?
MATERA, Italy — For his cinematic retelling of the story of Jesus Christ, “The New Gospel,” the Swiss-born, Belgium-based director Milo Rau sought answers: What would Jesus preach in the 21st century? Who would he stand with? What would he fight for?
Mr. Rau found one answer in contemporary Italy, where his project unfolded this year. To play Christ, he chose a former migrant seasonal worker, one of the thousands who harvest crops in the fields of Southern Italy. They work exhausting hours for little pay while living in overcrowded, derelict shantytowns, often with no access to electricity or water.
So one late September afternoon, an offbeat parade of migrants, young Italians, members of various nongovernmental organizations, journalists, locals with their dogs and even a donkey snaked along the white-stoned streets of Matera, chanting “work, dignity, rights.” Mr. Rau marched in the crowd, pumping his fist to the chants as cameras rolled.
Jesus and his apostles led the parade, which was the movie’s scene of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, and they stopped on the steps of a cathedral under the sweltering sun to sing “Bella Ciao,” an old song that has been adopted as an anthem against Fascism.
Speeches followed: about the hardships the migrants endure to put food on Italians’ tables; about the difficulties they face as foreigners; about the hostility, racism and bureaucracy that prevent many from achieving legal status. “There will be hatred against us; I ask you to resist,” Yvan Sagnet, a Cameroonian, told the crowd. “We have to fight. We have to remain united.”
Mr. Sagnet, who was knighted in 2016 by the president of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, for his work with migrants, is Jesus. Other advocates for migrants’ rights — also black Africans living in Italy — were chosen to play the apostles, along with one
Italian who is active in a small farmer’s rights group. A truck dumped tomatoes onto the pavement. Jesus and his apostles began stomping on them with gusto, crying, “Let’s destroy what destroys us.”
“The New Gospel” is an original work for Matera 2019, a series of events for this city’s turn as European capital of culture. Matera is known for its cave dwellings that have made it a stand-in for the Holy Land. Pier Paolo Pasolini filmed his 1964 movie “The Gospel According to St. Matthew” here, and Mel Gibson followed with “The Passion of the Christ” 40 years later. Mr. Rau said his initial idea had been to bring together actors who had worked here with Pasolini and Mr. Gibson and “do a new Jesus film.”
But once Mr. Rau arrived in Matera and came to know of the hardships of the migrants who toil in the fields, the project took a turn. It brought together a “mix of real activists, of authentic people and of actors,” he said, including the Spaniard Enrique Irazoqui, who played Jesus in the Pasolini film, and the Romanian Maia Morgenstern, who played Mary in Mr. Gibson’s film. Mr. Rau said his film would make the rounds of film festivals before its theatrical release a year from now.
The crew shot scripted scenes for the film and they staged public events as part of an emancipatory political campaign called The Revolt of Dignity.
Mr. Sagnet said the campaign aimed to create a bottom-up network that would fight for migrants’ rights in Italy and beyond: “The film is the beginning, not the end.”
In Rome and Palermo, Sicily, scripted scenes for the film were followed by unscripted public debates. Rome’s deputy mayor was booed when he said he couldn’t support squatters’ rights, while Palermo’s mayor was cheered for giving residence permits to migrants.
“For us, Jesus was a prophet and an activist for justice,” Mr. Sagnet said. “He was a union leader, he fought. Jesus was all this.”