Mona Fastvold’s latest is less a musical, more a rite that shatters every Broadway rule. It floods the 18th-century religious revival with light while showing how a woman’s body, spirit, and hunger for freedom can ignite sacred rebellion. No wonder it’s the most whispered-about musical of 2025: Ann Lee doesn’t just question faith—she reinvents it.
Why Now? — The Return of the Spiritual Musical
Two currents rule 2025 cinema: blockbuster spectacle (Wicked: For Good) and inward, devotional song-pictures where silence itself becomes rhythm. The Testament of Ann Lee belongs squarely to the second. Here, music isn’t entertainment; it’s prayer. Fastvold says it plain: “For the audience to feel, they must first be still.” The film grows by dropping songs into that stillness.
A Lament on Faith, Womanhood, and Music
Searchlight Pictures’ hymn tells the true story of Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers. In 18th-century America, a female mystic builds a community on equality, celibacy, and liberty: a world dancing with God, independent of men. Amanda Seyfried becomes her—carrying silence like scripture, praying with her body, interrogating belief with her voice. The two original songs—“Clothed by the Sun” and “John’s Running Song”—hover between hymn and dirge, earthly and divine, close enough to touch.
Mona Fastvold’s Cinema — From Obedience to Revelation
After The World to Come and The Brutalist, the Norwegian director delivers her most personal work yet. She places woman’s spiritual experience inside a “musical body”: silence as note, gaze as prayer, movement as ritual. Fastvold’s lens is no longer merely feminist; it is mystic. She rescues the sacred from male narration and hands it to feminine intuition.
“My films should breathe like prayers,” the director says.
Ann Lee does exactly that: breathes like prayer, enchants while inhaling.
Amanda Seyfried — Faith Made Flesh
At 39, Seyfried scales her career peak. After the poised elegance of Mank, she now surrenders like a monk. Watching her feels less like watching an actor, more like watching a mood. Every song is confession; every silence, defiance. Golden Globe nods feel locked; her name already circulates for Oscar—especially Best Actress and Best Original Song.
From the Critics
⭐Variety: “A hypnotic hymn to faith and womanhood.”
⭐The Guardian: “A spiritual musical—visual and aural ecstasy.”
⭐IndieWire: “A film that sings with silence.”
⭐Deadline: “Every note sacred, every pause profound.”
Since its Venice bow, it’s been crowned “the season’s most original musical.”
Awards Season & Release Calendar
Golden Globes:
- Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
- Best Actress – Amanda Seyfried
Likely Oscar Noms:
- Best Actress
- Best Original Song
- Best Cinematography
- Best Production & Costume Design
🎞️ Wide Release: 25 December 2025
🎥 Distributor: Searchlight Pictures
🌍 World Premiere: 82nd Venice Film Festival (In Competition)
Apartment 26 Note
When Cinema Prays
The Testament of Ann Lee is less musical, more liturgy. You surrender not to the score but to the breath beneath it. A film where faith is reborn in a woman’s body, her song, her hush. Mona Fastvold blesses the screen, Amanda Seyfried sings the divine, and we realize—sometimes belief begins the moment a woman finds her own voice.
