A Black Jesus and Muslim migrants in 'The New Gospel'

The New Gospel is marked by the charisma and authenticity of its actors. Yvan Sagnet plays Jesus of Nazareth, and he also plays himself: a social activist who wants to put an end to the workers' intolerable living conditions in the tomato fields. For years, Sagnet, who was awarded the Italian order of merit "Ordine al Merito della Repubblica" and founded the international NoCap network, has campaigned against agricultural labor exploitation and for fair-trade products produced entirely without the structures of the local mafia.

Papa Latyr Faye, the founder and president of "Casa Sankara - Ghetto Out" organization, plays Peter. In the film and in everyday life, he fights for self-determination for day laborers and procures decent housing and legal, self-managed jobs for them.

The film was "an opportunity to reach a wider audience with the things we do and to spread the message that we are protagonists. We are people who want to decide about our future. We don't want to live in dependencies, we want to leave them behind," Faye told DW.

"With the story of the Passion of Christ, Milo takes one of the fundamental Western myths and at the same time tells the story of the West's current moral failure — for instance in the refugee crisis and in the fact that the West at least tolerates the conditions on the plantations," Birkenstock told DW. "We Germans don't even have to look to southern Italy — just look at the conditions in the local meat industry."

The project was challenging from an artistic point of view, too. Reality and fiction needed to be interwoven, including "the great models of former films, from Pasolini to Gibson, the political campaign, the making of, and the systematic exploitation of refugees and farm workers."

Social message

Milo Rau's The New Gospel is the first European film starring a Black Jesus, the first Gospel story featuring refugees and a mixed cast of Jews, Muslims and Christians. And it is much more: Rau managed to push aside the religious, traditional and mystical elements of the story of the Passion of Christ, and expose its essence, its radical social message.

Rau's film is not only highly political, it is radically human. The New Gospel is a masterpiece that is as convincing as it is moving.

www.dw.com/en/black-jesus-mu...pel/a-55983600