Watch: Jesus meets Ciaran Hinds in the first clip from Last Days in the Desert; plus new photos and interviews

Watch: Jesus meets Ciaran Hinds in the first clip from Last Days in the Desert; plus new photos and interviews May 2, 2016

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Last Days in the Desert is almost upon us. The film — which stars Ewan McGregor as both Jesus and Satan — opens next week, starting with special “event” screenings on May 12. And today we got our first non-trailer, non-featurette clip from the film.

Here is the clip, which was first posted at the Faith Forward blog here at Patheos:

A few more interviews with the filmmakers have popped up, too.

The New York Daily News spoke to McGregor and writer-director Rodrigo Garcia:

“You don’t want him to look like some of these starry-eyed Jesuses with clean robes that appear in some movies,” Garcia said. “Jesus and his followers were very poor and lived in a harsh environment so out there 40 days in the desert he is all but a homeless man.”

A more controversial choice was to also cast McGregor as the devil, making the Prince of Darkness a mirror image to the Son of God. The scenes were difficult to shoot, with stunt double Nash Edgerton standing in for McGregor as one or the other as Garcia shot every sequence twice.

“It could have been a different actor, it could have been represented by a more classical horned-winged creature,” explained McGregor. “But because the devil’s role in the story is to mess with Yoshua (Jesus’s Hebrew name) … how do you not trust the words that seem to be coming out of your own mouth?”

Garcia also spoke to Fox News Latino:

The Colombian moviemaker and son of the late Nobel laureate in Literature, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, said he grew tired of making “realistic films about women with all that dialogue.”

“I wanted a different world, to travel into the past, to the desert, in search of simple conflicts,” the 56-year-old Garcia said.

Jamie Wright @ The Very Worst Missionary writes about visiting the set:

A long time ago, in a desert far, far away, I found myself standing in a half-circle with a handful of professional Christians on a film set in the middle of effing nowhere. I was invited there, along with a pile of smart people, for a sneak peek at a little indie art house production, written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia. . . .

Shortly after we arrived on set, actor Ewan McGregor came over to shake hands and introduce himself to us, one by one, saying, “Hi, I’m Ewan…I’m Ewan, nice to meet you…I’m Ewan, how are you?…Hey, I’m Ewan…” Like we might not know he was Ewan. When I called home that night, my kids asked what Obi Wan McGregor was like, and I told them the truth. “He was kinda like a homeless person…but, like, if a homeless person’s eyes were made of the Caribbean Sea.”

I linked to earlier interviews with McGregor here, here, here, here and here.

Finally, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki has been posting some photos he took on the set to his Instagram feed. Here are the pictures he has posted so far:

"Last Days in The Desert" # 1

A photo posted by @chivexp on

"Last Days in the Desert" # 2

A photo posted by @chivexp on

"Last days…"

A photo posted by @chivexp on

"Last days…" @lastdesert

A photo posted by @chivexp on

Check out earlier trailers and other videos here:


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