“The film allowed me to take my own deeply religious upbringing and my youth into consideration (but) only by adopting a respectful distance....What interested me was the intimacy of the people praying to God.”-Ulrich Seidl

Austrian director Ulrich Seidl, whose work was showcased at PFA in 2002, “is known for his sly, sometimes uncomfortable portraits in both documentary and dramatic features. The prayer of a worn middle-aged woman opens his latest, Jesus, You Know, which chronicles the lives of six devout Austrians through prayers that shade into confessions. Filmed in sanctuaries gloriously empty, save the praying individual, it places the audience in the faces of these lone souls, intimately acquainting us with their hopes and desperations. A troubled man prays to understand his childhood; a woman, for the strength not to poison her husband; a young man, for relief from his grandiose fantasies. Jesus, You Know is an intriguing study of prayer as a solace for those seeking acceptance, as a vehicle for one-sided gossip, and as an addictive, if unintentional, means of isolation.”