Coming to Showtime for its cable broadcast premiere tonight, Tuesday, July 23: VIRGIN TALES
Mirjam Von Arx’s exploration of a family’s devotion to their children’s chastity made its debut at Visions du Réel last year. It went on to screen at Silverdocs, Denver, Woodstock, and Vancouver, among other fests.
I previously wrote about the doc out of Silverdocs for Indiewire, saying:
Making its North American premiere here, Mirjam Von Arx’s film on the bizarre new phenomenon of Evangelical Christian purity balls showcases the overly close Wilson family of Colorado Springs. The founders of the event in their community, Randy and Lisa Wilson celebrate the chastity of their daughters until marriage and hold elaborate ceremonies for all manner of events in their seven home-schooled children’s lives. Focusing on a supposedly media-savvy family whose patriarch serves as the spokesman for a Religious Right “think tank,” Von Arx manages to capture moments of pure gold – manufactured “heartfelt” confessions of familial love whose lack of spontaneity is called out by a particularly sassy daughter, or the revelation from the twenty-something daughter (who’s desperately still waiting for her husband to appear) that she didn’t go to college because it would be a “waste of money” since she just wants to be a wife and mother. If it wasn’t so infuriatingly real, the film would make for great comedy.
what (not) to doc 