Courtesy (The Washington Post)

Directors Head in Daring Directions With Film Festival Entries By Laura Winters

The 26 feature films at this year's New York Film Festival suggest that a spirit of innovation and daring is flourishing among both independent American directors and the more established foreign filmmakers, like Mike Leigh and Hayao Miyazaki, whose new work took off in unexpected directions.

"Directors are taking ideas and themes that have been in their work and going much further than they ever have before," said Richard Pena, the program director for the festival, now in its 37th year...

Jane Campion and Kevin Smith, on the other hand, explore new territory in their work through the forthright way they take on matters of religion and personal faith.

Campion's "Holy Smoke," which features an incendiary performance by Kate Winslet and which will open here early next year, is about a young Australian woman who joins a cult in India and who, at her family's insistence, is confronted with a professional deprogrammer (Harvey Keitel). Tracing the duo's brutal tug of war, the film raises provocative questions about the struggle for power in sexual relationships and the ability of religion to divide as well as to heal.

"Dogma," in contrast, by "Clerks" director Kevin Smith, is a New Jersey-based comedy that addresses questions of faith while telling an adventure tale more on the order of "Ghostbusters." Two banished angels (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) scheme to reenter the Kingdom of Heaven through a loophole they've found in Catholic dogma. Racing to stop them, and to save mankind, are a woman (Linda Fiorentino) who is a long-lost relative of Christ's and happens to work in an abortion clinic, two loopy prophets and a 13th apostle (Chris Rock). The film has drawn criticism from conservative Catholic groups, but for the 29-year-old Smith--who considers himself a devout Catholic--such criticism is misguided.

"This is a completely pro-faith movie," he says. "It's frustrating when people come down on the film who haven't even seen it." He continues, "The film may have jokes, but at the end of the day it's faith-affirming and devout. I didn't want to get on a soapbox and proselytize. I wanted to do something where there's a lot of faith but where you're entertained as well. After the laughter wears off, you'll think about it."