After years away from the spotlight, Mishima and Patty Hearst director Paul Schrader roared back to the forefront with First Reformed, the stark portrait of how wider environmental anxieties impacts the more intimate spiritual and emotional realms of daily life.

After crossing paths with a pessimistic environmentalist, Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) finds himself pursued by one all-consuming question: “Will God forgive us for what we’re doing to His creation?” What follows is a harrowing descent into the depths of hope and despair, a lone soul struggling for meaning in the face of man-made apocalypse. 

Thrilling, strange, and uniquely engaged with current environmental anxieties, First Reformed is one of the best American films in recent years. While the film reflects a meditative approach influenced by the transcendental style of the masters of austerity, Yasujirō Ozu, Carl Theodor Dreyer, and Robert Bresson, the film’s unflinching narrative and howling tone is distinctly Schrader’s own.