It’s 1425, and 8-year-old shepherdess Jeannette—the future Joan of Arc—already has the weight of the French nation on her shoulders as she grapples with matters of the soul, the ongoing Hundred Years’ War, and the feeling that she is meant for something great. Along the way there are head-banging nuns, surreal angelic visions, and a cavalcade of hard-stomping electro-rock song and dance numbers recorded live on location. The result is an ecstatically unique and transportive experience that is, at heart, the story of a young heroine realising her destiny.

Dumont’s deeply powerful work can be seen as a silly, funny, ludicrous film, and rightly so. But it can also be taken as a serious work. Devote atheist Dumont has rigorously adapted the tormented Catholic Charles Péguy’s Le mystère de la Charité de Jeanne d’Arc (1910), a philosophical play in which each character represents an ideology—whether the devil, family or the orthodox church—and tests little Jean with the limits of her belief. Like a flame quivering in the wind, Jeannette flickers between both modes, illuminating us all.

Also see: The passionate politics of Joan of Arc

Special thanks to Luxbox Films.