Top 150 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2019: #144. The Seven Last Words – Multiple Directors

The Seven Last Words

Canadian filmmaker, musician and composer Kaveh Nabatian assembles six directors beside himself for the multidisciplinary omnibus project The Seven Last Words. Besides himself are Ariane Lorrain, Still Light, Still Night’s Sophie Goyette (pictured above), Juan Andres Arango, Sophie Deraspe, Karl Lemieux, and Caroline Monnet who are joined by the British Callino String Quartet. The films were shot in Iran, Haiti, Colombia, Nunavut and Quebec in 35mm, 16mm and HD while Marc Boucrot (of Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void and Love) was the film’s editor.

Gist: Based on The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross (1787) by Joseph Haydn, a piece commissioned for the artist expressing the suffering of Christ on the cross, each director “provides their own very personal view of the themes in Heiden’s piece: forgiveness, redemption, abandonment and reunion. Nabatian himself made the intriguing introduction and the concluding ‘earthquake’, which frame the seven short films.”

Release Date/Prediction: Selected as part of Rotterdam’s Bright Future program in 2018 (here is the teaser), we expected to see The Seven Last Words appear as part of the 2019 Rotterdam Film Festival, and that was confirmed late in 2018. The film has been announced as screening with live accompaniment from London-based Callino String Quartet and is meant to be seen across a variety of venues.