Paul Schrader's First Reformed follows a small-town pastor whose quiet crisis of faith turns into something far more consuming.
What is First Reformed about?
Reverend Ernst Toller keeps a dwindling upstate New York congregation going more out of habit than conviction, still working through grief over a son he lost in military service. His routine breaks when a pregnant parishioner asks him to counsel her husband, an environmental activist consumed by dread over the state of the planet. The conversation pulls Toller into questions he thought he had buried, and a visit to the church's well-funded parent institution exposes a gap between its public piety and its private compromises. As Toller keeps a private journal and his physical health quietly worsens, his despair curdles into something closer to obsession, and the film tracks how far a man convinced he is seeing clearly can drift from everyone around him.
About the cast
Ethan Hawke anchors the film as Toller, working in a register far quieter than his usual roles, with Amanda Seyfried as the parishioner whose request sets the story moving. Cedric the Entertainer plays the head of the larger church, a very different part from the comic roles he is best known for.
Context & significance
Paul Schrader has spent decades writing and directing men isolated by their own convictions, going back to his screenplay for Taxi Driver, and First Reformed reads as a late-career return to that same territory, filtered through a much more restrained visual style. The film's small cast and single-location church setting keep the focus tightly on one man's interior collapse rather than any larger plot machinery.
Watching First Reformed on Ktime
First Reformed streams on K-Time with both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, so it can be watched either fully in Farsi or in the original English with Farsi text. A free K-Time account is all that is needed to start watching; the platform's Farsi interface makes it easy for Persian-speaking viewers anywhere to find and follow along.