With “The Testament of Ann Lee”, a movie about the founder of the 18th-century Shaker religious movement screening at the Venice Film Festival, director Mona Fastvold sought to honour a figure “on the verge of being erased from memory”.

Lee, played by Amanda Seyfried in the film that premiered at Venice this week, was “one of the very first American feminists who fought for equality” between the sexes, but also between all humans, Fastvold told AFP in an interview.

Born in 1736 in Manchester, England into a working-class family, Lee — or “Mother Ann” as her followers called her — created the Shaker movement, a Quakers offshoot, whose worship was based on dancing and singing to reach a trance-like state.

The Shakers’ principles as imposed by Lee — perceived as the female reincarnation of

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