There’s no shortage of ‘religion’ on film – priests battling demons, nuns singing, monks solving crimes.

But a straightforward faith-based film about a church’s revival is much rarer.

So, the success of Jesus Revolution might be something of a surprise. This new (2023) feature film from Jon Erwin and Brent McCorkle tells the true story of a 1970s Christian revival emerging from a community of hippies in Southern California.

Its distributors Kova International say it brought in more than £100,000 in its first week of cinema release (in June 2023) in the UK and Ireland, with church groups selling out cinema screens at weekday showings.

Is it just preaching to the converted? Well, it seems to be reaching (and impressing) a much wider audience, judging from online reviews and the response on IMDb.

The film tells of young Greg Laurie (Joel Courtney) searching for all the right things in all the wrong places: until he meets Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie), a charismatic hippie-street-preacher.

Together with Pastor Chuck Smith (Kelsey Grammer), they open the doors of Smith’s languishing church to an unexpected revival of radical and newfound love, leading to what Time Magazine dubbed a ‘Jesus Revolution’.

Co-writer and co-director Jon Erwin recalls how he came across a Time Magazine article in the 1970s: “I was just awestruck by the article, by how positive it was, by how buoyant and hopeful it was. It was this spiritual awakening that was sweeping the country at a time of despair. Right then, I wanted to make the movie.”

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