The director of this Italian documentary, Valentina Pedicini, died in November 2020 of liver cancer. This is a terrible shame for various reasons. Pedicini was, in her all-too-short career, a remarkably fearless documentary filmmaker. In her 2010 “My Marlboro City”, she investigated the cigarette smuggling trade in her hometown of Brindisi. For “From the Depths” (2013), she accompanied a female miner who works more than 1,500 feet below sea level.
“Faith”, his latest film, presented in large black and white screen, starts with an explanatory text, telling how in 1998 a man whom the public will only know as the Master founded a kind of monastery and populated it with himself. -called Warriors of Light. They are monks and mothers trained in martial arts, fighting “against demons”, supposedly “in the name of the Father”.
We see these warriors, 20 years after the formation of the group, all dressed in white, under a strobe light, doing a rave-style dance workout. We watch them intone “The Our Father” and “Hail Mary” in unison. They are seen sharing a pasta dinner, at the end of which all the guests lick their plates. We see their shared bathroom and watch them shave their heads.
One does not take long to wonder in the name of which “Father” these ascetics work. A reunion revolves around Gabriele, a monk who has apparently flirted or slept with all the women in the group. He refuses to quit (his behavior is discouraged by the group) and half-heartedly promises to work on a confession. As for the Master himself, he intimidates women by telling them: “You don’t deserve to be a warrior.
Pedicini structures the film as an oblique narrative rather than an exposition. And “Faith” is all the more disturbing for that. Clearly, this distinctive filmmaker was just getting started.
Faith
Unclassified. Duration: 1h34. Watch on Film Movement+.