First Reformed

Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) is a solitary pastor at a small 250-year-old Dutch Reform church in upstate New York. Once a stop on the Underground Railroad, the church is now a tourist attraction catering to a dwindling congregation, eclipsed by its nearby parent church with its state-of-the-art facilities and 5,000-strong flock. When a pregnant parishioner (Amanda Seyfried) asks him to counsel her husband, a radical environmentalist, the clergyman finds himself plunged into his own tormented past, and equally despairing future, until he finds redemption. From filmmaker Paul Schrader (American Gigolo, Cat People). (R, 108 mins)

“It is the portrait of a soul in torment, all the more powerful for being so rigorously conceived and meticulously executed.” – A.O. Scott, The New York Times

“Paul Schrader has always been a faith-based filmmaker in the truest and most challenging sense, and First Reformed is the sort of stimulating work that a writer-director of a certain age can deliver when he returns to his creative sweet spot; rejoice, Schrader fans, rejoice.” – Alonso Duhalde, The Wrap