BELIEVER

Year: 2001
USA: IDP
UK: Pathe Distribution
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Summer Phoenix, Glenn Fitzgerald, Theresa Russell, Billy Zane, Garret Dillahunt, Kris Eivers, Joel Garland, Joshua Harto, Tommy Nohilly, Chuck Ardezzone, Roberto Gari, Heather Goldenhersh, A D Miles, Elizabeth Reaser, David Bailey, Christopher Kadish, Sascha Knopf, Jordan Lage, Judah Lazarus, Sig Libowitz, Dean Strober
Director: Henry Bean
Country: USA
USA: 100 mins
UK: 98 mins
USA Rated: R for strong violence, language and some sexual content
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong language, violence, and sex
USA Release Date: 17 May 2002 (Limited Release - Los Angeles and New York)
UK Release Date: 7 December 2001

Synopsis

Twelve-year-old Danny Balint (Ryan Gosling) is a precocious intellectual, arguing with the rabbis at the yeshiva, and running away from gentile toughs on the street. By twenty-two, he is a skin-head, living alone, browsing militia movement websites and developing ever more complex and fervent anti-Semitic theories.

At a neo-Fascist organising meeting at the home of Lina Moebius (Theresa Russell), Danny impresses people with his articulate violence, especially Lina's bright and complicated daughter, Carla (Summer Phoenix), who is more interested in Danny's mind and passion than in her mother's politics.

As Danny rises in right-wing circles, his increasing prominence threatens to expose him as a Jew. Fleeing New York with fellow skinheads, he picks a fight in a kosher deli, ends up in court and is sentenced to "sensitivity training" with elderly Holocaust survivors. As they tell their terrible stories, Danny explodes in rage at the Jews' helplessness before the Nazis, their willingness to endure and survive rather than fight back and be destroyed.

Yet the survivors affect him more than he knows or would admit. Consequently when he leads a group of skinheads into a nearby synagogue to plant a bomb the sanctuary, the ark, and above all, the Torah touch Danny in a way he doesn't expect and doesn't want. Based on the true story of a Jewish Nazi, THE BELIEVER is directed by Henry Bean.

DVD EXTRAS

Original Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
16x9
Sound Quality: Dolby Digital 5.1
Special Features: Original Theatrical Trailer
30 minute documentary "The Anatomy of a Scene"