![‘The Testament Of Ann Lee’ Review: A Divine Amanda Seyfried Shines In Mona Fastvold’s Musical Parable [Venice]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/01075812/The-Testament-Of-Ann-Lee-Amanda-Seyfried.jpg "The-Testament-Of-Ann-Lee-Amanda-Seyfried")
Mona Fastvold has always been drawn to stories of desire, conviction, and lives lived on the margins, and her latest feature appears poised to continue that trajectory with bold ambition. The Testament of Ann Lee, distributed by Searchlight Pictures, will open in select theaters on December 25, 2025, and will be notably released in 70MM.
Fastvold reunites with Brady Corbet on the script to tell the extraordinary life of Ann Lee, the 18th-century mystic who founded the Shakers religious sect. Lee believed herself to be a female incarnation of Christ and preached radical gender equality — ideas that made her a lightning rod even in her own era. The film made its world premiere earlier this fall at the Venice Film Festival, where it drew acclaim for its audacity and Seyfried’s transformative lead turn.
Amanda Seyfried inhabits the role with both ferocity and vulnerability. As she told Vanity Fair, she embraced extremes: “You could ruin your fucking voice … the weirder, the better.” The Playlist review of the film at Venice praises her performance as one that “lives and breathes the grace [her character] exudes,” all while “bearing the strain of deep, profound struggle to arrive at a place of inspiring joy.”
That grounding in human vulnerability is essential in a film filled with ritual and spectacle. Our review also noted that while the movie “flirts with being an all-out musical,” it never leaves Seyfried unmoored: “If the film around her functions more like a loosely defined parable, Seyfried always provides human grounding to root this baroque retelling in visceral vulnerability.”
The cast also includes Thomasin McKenzie, Lewis Pullman, Tim Blake Nelson, and Christopher Abbott, rounding out the community of believers, skeptics, and dissenters who orbit Lee’s vision.
One of the film’s boldest choices is its musical and choreographic framework: over a dozen original Shaker hymns are reinvented as movement sequences. Celia Rowlson-Hall oversees the choreography while composer Daniel Blumberg crafts a score that moves between ritual and theatrical intensity.
Fastvold’s past films — “The World to Come” and “The Brutalist”— already showcased her fascination with faith, isolation, and inner turmoil. The Testament of Ann Lee amplifies those obsessions into a period spectacle, with an eye on both inner life and communal acts.
By placing Ann Lee at the heart of this production, Fastvold reframes not just a historical narrative but a question about women’s spiritual authority, faith, and performance. With Seyfried at the helm, “The Testament of Ann Lee” is positioned as a serious awards contender — an artist’s film with the scale of an epic.
Opening December 25, 2025, in select theaters via Searchlight Pictures, this is a project that aims to be felt in the body, heard in the hymn, and thought about in the mind.
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
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