Jaco van dormael interview magazine

Interview with Jaco Van Dormael by Paul Risker

Jaco Van Dormael’s comedy Brand New Testament serves up the suggestion that God has a flexible persona that can feed the revisionist imagination.

It is one that draws on the ruthlessness of the original Old Testament God versus the compassion that imbues the New Testament, although with a few revisionist tweaks.

“God exists and he lives in Brussels, has a wife and a daughter and he seems to be a real guy” explains Dormael.

But behind the comedy of the concept there is a satirical political edge that originally escaped the filmmakers attention.

 
An apartment in Brussels, the city that is the beating heart of the E.U is perhaps the perfect place for God to turn up.

Jaco van dormael interview magazine

“Indeed, where he invents all these laws to annoy people [laughs]” mocks Dormael. “But It’s funny because it was something I didn’t realise when I was making it. The first time I showed it to friends from Portugal then of course God lives in Brussels where