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Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) acts as the pastor of a small church in upstate New York. Troubled by falling attendance at the church and plagued by guilt for encouraging his son to enlist in the war that caused his death, Toller begins to spiral further after being visited by a pregnant woman (Amanda Seyfried) whose radical environmentalist husband wants her to get an abortion due to what he sees as the imminent ravages of climate change.

Paul Schrader plays with the themes and narrative set-ups of Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest 1951 and Bergman’s Winter Light 1963 in this sensational, religiously minded drama. Hawke’s portrayal of the cracking Reverend Toller is an electrifying performance – existentially distraught, deserted by those around him, he is God’s lonely man. Earning an Academy Award nomination for its screenplay – his first after five decades of filmmaking – First Reformed finds Schrader as caustic and prescient as ever.