The Brand New Testament  

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"Lois de l'emmerdement universel: "La quantite de sommeil necessaire est de dix minutes de plus" and "quand on plonge un corps dans une baignoire, le telephone sonne."

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The Brand New Testament (Le Tout Nouveau Testament) is a 2015 comedy film directed by Jaco Van Dormael. The film is a co-production between France, Belgium and Luxembourg. The film was screened at the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

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Plot

God is real and lives in an apartment in Brussels, which he shares with his meek wife and his 10-year-old daughter Ea, to whom he is emotionally and physically abusive. God is a grumpy sadist who created mankind specifically to have something to torment. He manipulates reality via a personal computer, which he strictly forbids his family from accessing. One day, Ea sneaks into his office and discovers how He has been mistreating humans. This enrages God, who whips Ea with his belt.

Ea decides to rebel against her father. She steals the key to His office and accesses the pre-destined dates of death of every human in the world and releases it to the world. Everyone in Brussels receives a text message informing them when they are destined to die. Ea then locks God's computer and escapes the apartment through a chute (secret passage) in the laundry room. Wandering the streets of Brussels, Ea decides to follow in Jesus' footsteps and write the Brand New Testament in order to spiritually uplift the human race. She selects six apostles.

The first is a vagrant, whom she chooses to be her scribe.

The second apostle is a reclusive woman who lost her left arm in an accident and feels nobody will love her.

The third apostle is a sexually-frustrated old man who is awkward around women. He is perpetually lovesick over a girl he met once as a boy. On Ea's encouragement, he becomes a voice actor for porn movies, where he coincidentally meets the girl of his youth. They form a relationship which they consummate.

The fourth apostle is a man who is fascinated with death. When he learns that everyone's death is pre-destined, he purchases a rifle with plans to shoot pedestrians, believing that he will not really be at fault for their deaths. Ea prods him to shoot a woman, who happens to be the second apostle. He hits her in her prosthetic arm. Believing this to be a divine signal, he courts the woman and forms a relationship, and learns to embrace life instead of death.

The fifth apostle is an elderly woman trapped in a loveless marriage. Ea persuades her to cheat on her husband. She first does so with a male prostitute, then with a gorilla. The gorilla beats up her husband, to her delight.

The sixth apostle is a sickly boy who discovers he has only days left to live. Ea encourages him to stop conforming to society and live his few remaining days according to his inner desires. He chooses to dress and act like a girl.

God is horrified when he discovers what Ea has done. With everyone now aware of the time they have left, he can no longer torment humans through their fear of death. Worse still, with His computer locked, He is powerless. He leaves the apartment for the first time in His life through the chute in the laundry room. Because of His rude manners, he is abused by everyone He meets. He discovers to his horror that the chute to his apartment is gone and He is trapped in the outside world, powerless and alone. He is forced to take shelter in a church, and is eventually deported to Uzbekistan after being mistaken for an illegal migrant.

Ea and her apostles go to the seaside, where hundred of people have gathered to spend the last hours of their lives. A airplane, which just so happens to be carrying God under police escort, falls out of the sky, threatening everyone on the beach. At this moment, however, God's wife, who has grown accustomed to life without her husband, accesses God's computer and repeals everyone's destined date of death. The airplane regains altitude and everyone has a new lease on life.

The first apostle publishes the Brand New Testament, which becomes a bestseller, lifting him out of poverty. God winds up in Uzbekistan, where he vainly searches washing machines for a passage back to his apartment.

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Cast

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See also


Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "The Brand New Testament" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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