Paradise: Faith

In Paradise: Faith Ulrich Seidl explores what it means to carry the cross. For Anna Maria, a single woman in her 50s, paradise lies with Jesus. She devotes her summer vacation to doing missionary work, so that Austria may be brought back to the path of virtue. On her daily pigrimage through Vienna, she goes from door to door, carrying a foot-high stature of the Virgin Mary. One day, when after years of absence, her husband, an Egyptian Muslim confine to a wheelchair, comes home, her life goes off the rails. Hymns and prayers are now joined by fighting. Paradise: Faith recounts the stations of the cross of a marriage and the longing for love. The film is the second part of Ulrich Seidl's Paradise Trilogy, the first part, is about Anna Maria's sister Teresa, who paradise lies with more earthly love - with beach boys in Kenya. (Curious Films)