Cevilla's Story.

My mother was depressed. Not the type of depression that meant she walked around the house moping all day long, but the type that meant she didn't walk around the house at all. She did absolutely nothing. All day long. My father hired a woman from the village to look after me, and then when I was old enough, hired me to look after my mother - except I didn't get paid. I used to bathe and dress her. Then I would put her on the kitchen chair where she would sit all day long, staring into space. That was the bulk of my existence as a child. That and the out of body experiences I would conjure up to rid myself of the punishment life seemed to have dealt me. The punishment that had no crime.

Father Benedict said it was because of Eve. She had eaten the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and consigned us all to this fate. So I blamed Eve. I didn't understand how she could destroy the lives of so many for one single moment in time.

"Can we ever redeem ourselves, Father?" I asked on one of the rare occasions he came to visit.

"Of course," he said. "You must undo the evil by repentance, child."

But I didn't know what repentance was, and spent the next few years asking anyone who would care to listen, convinced that I would experience an epiphany when I succeeded.

When I was thirteen, I finally got the answer. Jethro was a man who seemed to know everything. He was to be leader, after all, when Father Benedict passed away. So at thirteen I was given to Jethro and went willingly, to ensure that the curse would be broken.

Jethro taught me all about repentance. He made sure I paid the price for Eve's rebellion every day.

Sister Rachel tried to tell me there was no curse and it had been lifted by Christ. She tried to tell me that Jethro was wrong and the pain he inflicted was for nothing. Sister Rachel met a deserving end.

The Book of Laws is not about God, but about about man-made religion and how over the years men have made up their own religions in order to exert control over a group of people. It explores the question of why power is pathologically important to a small group of people and why those brought up in a particular belief system find is so difficult to question or break away even though they sense the practices are bizarre and the belief system is wrong.

How many times have we heard about honour killings and wondered how it is possible for a mother to set her own daughter alight, or a father to stab his own child to appease the community? What value system do people in small, isolated communities have that restricts their choices and makes it so difficult to just say no?

Despite the cruelty, the members of the community obediently carry out rituals and punishments on members of their own families, the people they purport to love and condemn the next generation to do the same. As the next generation begin to question the rules, love paradoxically acts as both jailer and liberator. The love that creates the instinct to protect also creates the instinct to conform.

The Community ...

Follow the turbulent conflicts of two generations torn apart by prophecy and swept along a terrible path by spiritual deception.

The film draws us into into the community of the Book of Laws, who follow the teachings and lifestyle handed to them by the Prophet. They are a simple people and live ascetic lives free from materialism and the outside world and outside influences. Most are hard-working farmers who live off the land. They help each other out when they can, family is important to them and they take care of each other as a matter of duty.

The people of The Book work hard on their lands to scrape a meagre living. Theirs is a simple existence, punctuated by pontification and censure if rules are not strictly obeyed.

At first, the people of the community were happy, but the nature of the community recently and rapidly changed as the community and its leader Zebekiah found themselves in the grip of prophecies that challenged the core of their existence.

The Cast ...

Production Team ...

The Crew ...