New Release: Of Gods and Men Blu-ray/DVD

Of Gods and Men movie scene

A French Christian monk runs on faith in Of Gods and Men.

The acclaimed award-winning drama Of Gods and Men, a heavy duty film about the power of faith, was released as a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack on July 5, 2011, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Loosely based on the life of the Cistercian monks of Tibhirine in Algeria, the movie revolves around eight French Christian monks living in harmony with their Muslim brothers in a monastery perched in the mountains of North Africa in the 1990s. When a crew of foreign workers is massacred by an Islamic fundamentalist group, fear sweeps through the region. The army offers them protection, but the monks refuse. Should they stay or should they go….?

Directed and co-written by French filmmaker Xavier Beauvois, the movie stars Lambert Wilson (The Matrix Revolutions, The Matrix Reloaded) and Michael Lonsdale (Munich), among others.

Acclaimed by critics and audiences around the world, Of Gods and Men was awarded the Grand Prix at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, in addition to being named Best Foreign Language Film from the National Board of Review and winning Best Film at the 2010 Cesar Awards.

The film enjoyed an extended release in theaters in the U.S., but in few markets, so the disc gave the movie its biggest audience.

Presented in French and Arabic with English subtitles, the R-rated movie’s Blu-ray/DVD set includes two special features:

  • the behind-the-scenes featurette “The Sacrificed Tibéhirine: Further Investigation”
  • and Merrimack College Augustine Dialogue IX with Author John W. Kiser.

The discs are priced at $45.99.

Sony is releasing more and more of its smaller and foreign titles in a Blu-ray/DVD pack only. The studio bowed French animated film The Illusionist the same way.

Here’s the trailer for Of Gods and Men, a pretty provocative one:

 

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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.