This week I want to recommend two period pieces that share all-too-relevant themes of fear, oppression, faith and moral courage, despite very different subjects and styles. Both are playing in Vermont theaters.
Since garnering praise at film festivals last fall, The Testament of Ann Lee ★★★★ has received a Golden Globe nomination for Amanda Seyfried’s intense performance as the title character, a founder of the religious sect popularly known as Shakers (aka United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing). As of press time, see it at the Savoy Theater in Montpelier, Essex Cinemas and Majestic 10 in Williston.
Rather than depicting the life of Ann Lee (1736-1784) in standard biopic format, director-cowriter Mona Fastvold (The World to Come) has herself created something of a “testament,” immersed in the fervor of its characters. Ann’s friend Mary (Thomasin McKenzie) narrates with breathless reverence, telling us how the daughter of a Manchester blacksmith became a renowned visionary.
Raised on manual labor in a straitened, smoke-grimed world, young Ann is enraptured by a group of “shaking Quakers” who allow women to preach and include song and dance in their worship. After she marries, her life is defined by her husband’s sexual appetite, resulting in four children who all fail to survive their first year. Small wonder, perhaps, that when Ann is imprisoned for her unorthodox faith and experiences a spiritual revelation, her new doctrine decrees celibacy for everyone. With her younger brother (Lewis Pullman), she leads her followers to America. There, the pacifist, egalitarian Shakers will gain 6,000 adherents at their peak (according to the film).
Less an inspirational tale than a study of the primal need to believe, Testament doesn’t ask viewers to share Ann’s faith. Fastvold nudges us to note how her visions serve her personal thirst for autonomy — particularly the celibacy doctrine, which is tricky to enforce.
Stylistically, Testament could almost be mistaken for the first folk horror musical. The woodprint title cards have a Midsommar vibe, as do the scenes of Ann and her friends beating their breasts and whirling orgiastically in worship. The interiors are dark; the birth scenes, gory. The score by Daniel Blumberg (who also wrote the songs, incorporating real Shaker tunes) strikes as many ominous notes as celebratory ones.
If this is a horror story, however, the terror comes from unbelievers who attack Ann for her radical claim to speak the word of a bigender God. Even as Fastvold hints at cracks in the Shakers’ faith, she sincerely celebrates their hard work, tenacity and commitment to an emotionally charged form of worship that will thrill the theater kids in the audience. Witch-hunting Puritans get all the press, but Testament reminds us that early American believers could also be progressives with ideals that still resonate today.
While the conflicts of Testament belong to this nation’s heritage, the history depicted in All That’s Left of You is essentially still unfolding. Written and directed by Palestinian American Cherien Dabis (Amreeka), who also stars, this drama short-listed for the Oscars tells the story of three generations of a Palestinian family. It starts a run at Burlington’s Partizanfilm this Friday, January 30.
Early in the film, after a prologue packed with chaotic action, Dabis faces the camera and speaks in English. We may assume she’s addressing us, the viewer, as she gently notes her listener’s ignorance and offers a primer on her people’s history. In a graceful sleight of hand, however, the true context and weight of her story emerge only once we’ve watched it to the end.
That story begins with the Nakba of 1948, when the family of Sharif (Adam Bakri), an orange grower in Jaffa, loses its gracious home and freedom to the Israeli occupation. The narrative then jumps to 1978, when the family lives in a West Bank refugee camp. While the aging Sharif (Mohammad Bakri) bitterly cherishes his memories of a better life, his son, Salim (Saleh Bakri), takes a stoic, pragmatist approach.
A fissure opens between Salim and his own son, Noor (Sanad Alkabareti), after the boy witnesses his father’s humiliation by Israeli troops. Inspired by his grandfather to resist the occupation, the teenage Noor (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) joins a protest. The boy’s action will force his father and mother (Dabis) to a heartrending dilemma that tests their capacity for forgiveness.
The framing of All That’s Left of You ★★★★1/2 suggests it was designed, at least in part, to educate viewers on the Palestinian plight. While the film succeeds in that, the script and performances have an absorbing heft and complexity that lift it far above exposition or didacticism.
Playing opposite his real father, Saleh Bakri gives Salim the world-weariness of one who has labored most of his life to accept dispossession as his lot. Salim’s eyes light up when he teaches Palestinian schoolchildren, yet he can’t reach his own son. While Noor’s actions propel the plot, it’s his father’s journey — from resignation to despair to a form of ambivalent agency — that we’re invested in.
Tears flow when the narrative comes full circle, because Dabis has infused one fictional family’s story with the grief of many more. When we’re all riveted to a brutal news cycle, it’s easy to be cynical about the power of fiction to awaken empathy. But All That’s Left of You exemplifies that power in the best way.
This article appears in January 28 • 2026.
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