Interview with Lotfy Nathan, Director of ‘The Carpenter’s Son’

About a decade ago, British-American director Lotfy Nathan got his start in documentary filmmaking, with 12 O’Clock Boys, a documentary about the eponymous group of dirtbikers in Baltimore. His latest film, The Carpenter’s Son, starring Nicolas Cage, FKA twigs, and Noah Jupe, imagines Jesus’ teenage years through the eyes of the Holy Family as they hide in Roman-era Egypt.

Different as these films are, for Nathan, who comes from a Coptic Egyptian background, this evolution is a natural extension of his early work as a documentarian. “I kind of made my way into films through documentary. … Documentary, in a way, was an anchor for me, and it was pretty limiting, but…I started to add more fiction and my own embellishments — those seem to be the things that I find more satisfaction in.”

In 2022, Nathan debuted his first scripted feature, Harka, heavily inspired by the story of Mohamed Bouazizi, whose act of self-immolation kickstarted the Tunisian Revolution and a wave of anti-government protests across the Middle East and North Africa. Nathan initially took interest in making a documentary of Bouazizi’s life. For years, he visited Tunisia back and forth, as he did research of first-hand accounts of Bouazazi’s life and talked to his relatives and friends. “I wanted to shoot it in the town [Bouazizi’s town] and do it very faithfully, but all I was really getting was this kind of sanitized ‘Oh, he was a really good person,’ and ‘He was just persecuted.’ I didn’t really connect with that.” 

In the process, Nathan found something he wasn’t looking for.  “I found someone else in that town, who was on the fringes of his society … he was embittered and dangerous and wasn’t trying to solicit any sympathy from people. He was angry at the world.”  There was a “complexity” to him — no, a "volatility," Nathan recounts. Whereas Bouazizi was a fruit seller, the protagonist of Harka, Ali, is a petrol seller. Nathan leaned into this fictional portrayal, through which he could tell the story he set out to make. “I’m happy to do it with any kind of story,” he emphasizes.

Which brings Nathan to his next film. In the Bible, there is little mention of Jesus’ life between his birth and his ministry — not within the Biblical canon, at least. The apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which tells the story of Jesus’ life between two and fifteen years, served as a large inspiration for Nathan. Interestingly, other than a brief mention of the infancy gospel in the opening credits, Jesus is never referred to by name in the film — neither are Mary and Joseph. They are only ever epithetically referred to, e.g. “Child,” “Mother,” and “Father,” and their actors are credited as such.

“In the New Testament, you have ‘Is this not the carpenter’s son?’ spoken at one point,” Nathan explains. “There was a time in his life when he was just that.” This line was a focal point for Nathan in the development of The Carpenter’s Son. “I thought that was very interesting, which has to do with a kind of murkiness to who he was on Earth. I just explored that,” he continues. Nathan sees his project as an exploration of the human aspect of Jesus, an aspect which he glimpses within the traditional narratives. “I read into the line that Jesus speaks in the New Testament, ‘My God, why have you forsaken me?’ when he's being crucified. I think that to me is the voice of someone who is feeling alienated and abandoned. It’s the only way I can read that line.”

Nathan and the cast filmed The Carpenter’s Son on location in Greece on 35 mm film over a period of six weeks. Even as this film delves explicitly into the supernatural, he prioritized realism. In the process of developing the film, he worked with Dr. Katell Bethelot, a French academic specializing in ancient Judaism, to help flesh out the world he was building. “I think it’s adopting that aesthetic of documentary or naturalism that I've hung on to as I keep going,” he says. Nathan explores the battle between good and evil in all its starkness, which has led some to call The Carpenter’s Son a horror film. “I want to keep exploring the horror genre, but in my own way. I have something I’ve been writing that probably needs a little longer before I start to rant on about it.” 

Even with all the care taken to ground the story, Nathan had a lot of latitude in terms of creative liberties. In his first draft for the film, he tried to write faithfully to the traditional recountings of Jesus’ life and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. “But, as the process went on, I started to just do my own thing and do what felt right.” The story of The Carpenter’s Son ended up becoming its own unique story. The narrative crux of the story was “invented by filling in the blanks,” Nathan tells me. “That ended up being something I enjoyed, the invention,” he adds. In The Carpenter’s Son, he explores thorny questions regarding the relationship between the Divine and human. “It’s a far leap away from the way I was raised with Christianity, which is not to ask those kinds of questions or not to try to answer them,” he relates. 

The film, its questions, and its answers, come from a real place. Having worked on this project for years, it has come to mean a lot for Nathan. “I think people don't quite understand how much you get into it when you're writing a script or directing a movie about a subject. I mean, you have to care about it. If it was just entirely cynical and the effort is to make negative propaganda, I don't think that you'd stick out the whole process,” he defends. He continues, telling me about the millenia-long history of Christian art. In every art, there is always room for speculation, for filling in the cracks. “It's all interpretation that people feel compelled to try to render,” he concludes.

As the film’s US release looms large, Nathan reflects on this personal this exploration was and what it represents: “I think that is actually really compelling…that he wasn’t only capable of experiencing physical harm and damage and wasn’t only vulnerable physically and capable of dying. But he also, in his soul and mind, was vulnerable there as well. And it made the sacrifice all the more powerful. I think that’s actually a grander message from God.”

Having seen The Carpenter’s Son, the themes of humanity vis-à-vis the Divine and the relation between good and evil all come to bear through the family’s faith, doubt, and fears. Nathan provides a unique shape to the story of Jesus, in turn informed by his experiences, upbringing, and exploration of the apocrypha. For Nathan, that’s all there is to say at the moment. Recalling the process of making this film, “It’s still a bit of a blur to me,” he smirks. “I think probably in a couple of years, I’ll be able to remember specifics.”