Director: Mona Fastvold
Song, sect, and self-declared prophecy collide in Testament of Ann Lee, a 2025 historical drama that stages the origins of the Shaker movement as a musical rather than a conventional biopic.
What is Testament of Ann Lee about?
The film follows Ann Lee, an English mill worker who comes to believe she carries a divine calling and, after crossing the Atlantic, becomes the founding leader of what her followers name the Shaker movement. Rather than treating her as a settled historical footnote, the story dramatizes the raw uncertainty of building a community from nothing: converts drawn by conviction and desperation, skeptics who see manipulation where believers see revelation, and the daily grind of carving a utopian settlement out of unfamiliar land. Song and movement are woven through the narrative not as ornament but as the Shakers' own form of worship, dramatizing ecstatic dance and communal singing as expressions of faith that words alone could not carry. The result traces how a marginalized woman's conviction hardened into a movement that outlasted the skepticism, and sometimes the hostility, of the world around her.
Cast & crew
Amanda Seyfried leads as Ann Lee, carrying both the film's musical sequences and its quieter scenes of doubt and resolve. Lewis Pullman and Thomasin McKenzie appear among the early Shaker converts whose loyalty and skepticism shape the movement's fragile early years, with Christopher Abbott, Matthew Beard, Viola Prettejohn, David Cale, and Stacy Martin rounding out the ensemble that populates Lee's fledgling community.
Context & significance
Director Mona Fastvold builds the film around real events surrounding the Shaker movement's founder, using an international production spanning the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, Cyprus, and Hungary to recreate its 18th-century setting. The musical structure sets it apart from more straightforward religious-history dramas, treating faith as something felt through rhythm and voice as much as through doctrine.
Where & how to watch
Testament of Ann Lee is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, giving Farsi-speaking audiences full access to its songs and dialogue. This page is free to browse; watching the film itself only requires logging into a free K-Time account, part of a platform built around Persian-language streaming for Iranians living abroad.