(El Evangelio de las maravillas). Kurosawa Award-winner Arturo Ripstein's film for the millennium luridly exposes the life of a religious sect in Mexico preparing for the year 2000. A haven for prostitutes, vagrant teens, and misfits, it is led by a prophetess (Katy Jurado) who cheats at dominoes and a priest (Francisco Rabal) who worships Charlton Heston. Their rituals and dogmas are a warped combination of medieval processions, Hollywood biblical epics, and modern decadence. When a Nintendo-obsessed teenager assumes power over the cult, she begins to change the rules. The film is a compendium of Ripstein's recurrent themes and obsessions-eccentrics who construct their own world, the destructive pattern of relationships, the designs of fate, and devotion to cinema as the true religion.

• Written by Paz Alicia Garcíadiego. Photographed by Guillermo Granillo. With Francisco Rabal, Katy Jurado, Carolina Papaleo, Edward Gurrola. (112 mins)