Repentance

Cappella Romana brings to life the music of Arvo Pärt as you’ve never heard it before, presenting the composer’s Orthodox choral works for the first time as an Orthodox Service of Supplication. Built around the singing of a Byzantine poem called a kanon, on this occasion it features three odes from Pärts monumental Kanon Pokajanen (Kanon of Repentance). Compositions by Pärt likewise comprise the other elements of this service: a Gospel reading marks its center (The Woman with the Alabaster Box) complete by psalmody, Orthodox hymns, and fervent prayers. Pärt’s transcendent “Prayer after the Kanon” eventually gives way to silence, to the prayer of the heart.

An earnest life-coach/author, Thomas Carter, is mysteriously abducted by a deranged client, Angel Sanchez, who delves into Thomas' teachings and uses his spiritual messages of Karma - action and reaction (Vipaka), against him to terrorize him and his family for their past sins.

The villainous mayor of a small town in Georgia, Varlam (Avtandil Makharadze), responsible for Stalin-like terror in his megalomania, dies and is given a pompous burial. Problem arises when the attractive Guliko (Iya Ninidze), someone whose two daughters were persecuted by the mayor, keeps digging up his grave and placing it somewhere else.