Sacrifice

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Thought-provoking, visually arresting, and powered by a kinetic original script co-written with Will Arbery, Romain Gavras’ English-language debut Sacrifice is a satirical action-adventure and visually explosive epic.

During a star-studded charity gala brimming with celebrities, billionaires and empty speeches, a movie star in the midst of an existential crisis (Chris Evans) is taken hostage by a radical warrior (Anya Taylor-Joy) and her devoted followers. As the night descends into chaos, both an inward journey and an outward adventure ensue, where the line between performance and belief, salvation and sacrifice, begins to blur.

After the fiery death of their mother, Joan (Anya Taylor-Joy), and her siblings, driven by a mysterious volcanic prophecy, believe it is their duty to cleanse the Earth. Their radical group hijacks a glamorous charity gala and takes three unlikely hostages for a sacrificial ritual: their hero, movie star Mike Tyler (Chris Evans); their villain, pragmatically cold billionaire Ben Bracken (Vincent Cassel); and their lover, an unlucky performer named Katie (Ambika Mod). As the night descends into chaos, both an inward journey and an outward adventure ensue, where the line between performance and belief, salvation and sacrifice, begins to blur.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

I was born into a cinema family, who held a strong belief that films could change the world, or at least your perception of it. My Greek father read me myths; Walt Disney wasn’t allowed in our home. I grew up on tales of heroes making grand gestures, throwing themselves into fire, and Hephaestus forging weapons in a volcano.

This idea of changing the world was central to my upbringing—so much so that, as a kid, I wanted to be a Greek emperor (having realized very young that presidents don’t have enough power). Eventually, I lowered my ambitions and became a director.

Instead of changing the world, my wonderful writer, Will Arbery, and I decided to make a film about people wanting to change the world through a modern, pop, lyrical, psychedelic, symbolic, and fun tale about our times.

In Sacrifice, everyone wants to change the world—some for virtue signalling, some for profound, radical, illuminated reasons, and some for personal gain.

At the centre are Joan and Mike. I have the two of them constantly inside my head talking to me—I think in some ways, we all do.

In the morning, I feel like Joan: incandescent with faith and prepared to burn everything for the world to be reborn. In the afternoon I am like Mike: way less courageous and a lot more confused. He wants change and meaning but really doesn’t know how to achieve it—crippled by his ego and his incapacity to dissociate fiction and reality.

What happens when radical idealism meets reality and vanity?

This may come off as a bit cliché but I truly believe that changing the world begins with changing yourself—doing something selfless, making a leap of faith.

Ultimately, Sacrifice is a film about faith—looking for it, faking it, having too much of it, or having none at all. Jumping into a volcano is what we do when we decide to fall in love with someone, when we decide to stand for something.

This is the decision our hero will have to make at the end of the film.

It’s what we did when we decided to make an ambitious, singular film that has no template. Again, faith.

Cinema, for me, is the attempt to wrestle meaning from a world I don’t understand—a world that’s absurd, beautiful, petty, violent, and full of grace, often all in the same frame. With Sacrifice, I want the audience to feel that same chaos and wonder.

Now more than ever, it feels like we’re all dancing on the edge of a volcano. This is an invitation to stop dancing and jump.

ROMAIN GAVRAS (Director / Co-writer) is a Greek French filmmaker. His latest feature film, Athena, premiered in Main Competition in the Venice Film Festival 2022 and is currently on Netflix. His second film, The World Is Yours, premiered at Cannes 2018 as part of the Directors’ Fortnight and garnered several César nominations. His first feature film, Our Day Will Come, was nominated for SXSW Film Festival Audience Award. His music video work for Jay-Z and Kanye West’ ‘No Church in the Wild’ and M.I.A.’s ‘Bad Girls’ were shortlisted for Best Music Video at the Grammy Awards and his music video for “Gosh” by Jamie XX was nominated at the 2017 Grammys.

WILL ARBERY (Co-Writer, Executive Producer) is a playwright and screenwriter from Texas. In television, Will wrote for HBO’s Irma Vep and Succession, for which he won the WGA Award for Episodic Drama. His plays have been produced around the world, and Heroes Of The Fourth Turning was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, as well as an Obie and Whiting Award winner. He has premieres upcoming at Manhattan Theatre Club and The Metropolitan Opera.

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