The international teaser for Alejandro Amenábar’s Agora – starring Rachel Weisz as the 4th-century philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria, The Nativity Story‘s Oscar Isaac as the imperial prefect Orestes, and Sami Samir as the Christian bishop Cyril of Alexandria – is now online.
The teaser has no dialogue, only images, but at a glance, it almost looks like this film could be a feature-length version of that violent-Christian-mobs flashback in The Da Vinci Code. Hopefully the film itself will be a little more nuanced than that (regrettably, the historical Hypatia was indeed killed by a Christian mob during Lent), but even if it isn’t, it could still serve as a launching pad for deeper, better conversations about early church history.
Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly. Hat tip to ComingSoon.net.
For those who don’t recognize the director’s name, Amenábar’s previous films include the Oscar-winning euthanasia flick The Sea Inside (2004), the Nicole Kidman ghost movie The Others (2001) and the reality-bending Open Your Eyes (1997), the last of which was remade with Tom Cruise as Vanilla Sky (2001).
