A provocative conspiracy thriller in which a disgraced priest finds himself ensnared in the world of new media, Exemplum tells its story of faith, pride, and corruption with minimal budget and high creativity.
As social media has grown, its only natural that religious institutions like the Catholic Church would adapt their lines of communication to meet the flock where they congregate. Both Catholic clergy and laity have successfully done so with a smattering of podcast and YouTube channels that – like the rest of the online world – delivers insightful content on one hand and emotional ideological diatribes on the other. Subscribers and likes and (in some cases) ego have become more important than God.
That is where we find Father Colin Jacobi (Paul Roland) a young Catholic priest whose popular online channel “Exemplum” has made him a hit to a generation of lapsed Catholic’s, resulting in cues of sinners lining up at his confession door. Little do they know is that Colin is recording their confessions as fodder for his online videos.
When Colin is found out by his superior Father Liam (Francis Cronin) he is given the choice to either cease his social media shenanigans or leave the priesthood. Choosing ego over his calling to serve God, Colin soon finds that leaving the grace of God and sanctuary of the Church has left him open to attack from a corrupt world.
Shot in grainy black and white on a very small budget, Exemplum proves to be an intelligent and hauntingly powerful Catholic tech-noir thriller in which director, writer, producer, and star Paul Roland suitably digs into the rot within the souls of a tech-obsessed public.
With the false illusions of fame corrupting the soul of the films holy man protagonist, Exemplum very much presents a story of temptation with Colin biting the digital apple and triumphantly declaring “I am my own man now.”
A core theme in Exemplum is the battle between control and chaos, and in Colin’s naïve belief that he has the former he only finds himself marred deeper in the latter. Roland later has his protagonist mired in a conspiracy involving cyber hacking and blackmail. The most riveting and tragic thing about Exemplum, though, is watching this man – once devout, once content, once called to God – fall from grace and become slave to a different master.
In a world where many of us – this writer included – are obsessed with cracking the holy grail code of “the algorithm”, Exemplum shows us how forsaking God for the worship of likes and clicks is a quest of fools if ever there was one. As one character says in the film: “Grant us the grace to rise above the chaos.”
