In 2023, a talented young Catholic filmmaker named Paul Roland released a film he wrote, produced, directed, and stars in, calledExemplum. Shot in black and white, the film tells the story of a priest whose obsession with social media fame leads him into a dark spiritual spiral. It’s basically Breaking Bad set at a California parish.

Exemplum was made for $10,000. You read that correctly. It also has a rare 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes (RT). “There’s plenty of promise here that will warrant keeping an eye on Roland,” reviewer Douglas Davidson wrote,

mostly because there’s a daring here to ask big questions within an institution that’s overgrown past its intended purpose. That institutions far too often seek to preserve themselves rather than the ideas that spawned them and they tend to attract like-minded individuals thereby perpetuating problems instead of remaining malleable and within-purpose. Exemplum isn’t afraid to point out the frailty of community constitution and what it looks like when that’s taken advantage of. This makes Exemplum worth ruminating on; this makes what next big question Roland seeks to explore interesting.

The conservative film critic Christian Toto offered this: “Exemplum offers something meatier for secular and faith-based audiences alike. Its protagonist’s flaws are obvious, but his journey is both fresh and inviting. You haven’t seen a story like this before, and that’s refreshing.”

I recently spoke with filmmaker Paul Roland about Exemplum.

You made Exemplum for $10,000. It had a 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. How did you pull that off?

ROLAND: Where do I start? As I’ve been candid about in other interviews and in my public statements, Exemplum came with great difficulty. After getting the initial funds in early-2020, the pandemic hit. Then, several months later, my wife became pregnant with our beloved daughter. Then, immediately after, a negligent neighbor broke a water main and flooded our unit, so throughout all of the principal photography, my wife and I were bouncing between AirBnbs while our condo underwent repairs. The only two words that best describe the experience: are chaos and nightmare. 

Despite everything, and with the help of incredible friends, including my cinematographer (Vlad Ionescu), composer (Andrew Halpin), and producers (Joe Goodwin and J.F. Haggard), I persisted to the finish line. Keep in mind, I wore several hats on set, regularly shifting between director, actor, set decorator, location manager, craft services, etc. 

In 2023, we released the film and it has been a roller-coaster journey ever since. The audience feedback has been electric despite us having virtually no marketing budget. All word-of-mouth. That mobilized me to get solid press on the film, so I reached out to as many RT-approved critics as possible who would review the film to get the 100 percent you see now. I’d love to have more reviews on RT and welcome the critics to give this film a chance. 

Conservative films like Reagan are doing well. Do you consider yourself a conservative filmmaker or just a storyteller?

I wish to be exceedingly clear with this labeling. I am a filmmaker dedicated to the craft of storytelling whose well-spring of inspiration derives from my Catholicism and my philosophical outlook, which, like life itself, can be rather nuanced.

More to the point, I am an American filmmaker who makes films for all Americans. If former President Trump wants to host me for a screening at Mar-a-Lago, I’m there. If former President Obama wants to host me at Martha’s Vineyard, I’m there. If President Joe Biden wants to host me at the White House, I’m there. If Vice President Kamala Harris wants to host me in San Francisco, I’m there. 

I make culture and stories that Americans from all walks of life and social backgrounds can appreciate. Christians, Catholics, LGBTQ, Muslims, Mormons, Jews, etc., all Americans, all welcome as potential fans. 

If I could put all those people in a room together to watch my movie so that they can converse about it afterward and come to a mutual understanding about what it meant to them, then I would know I did something right. 

Walk me through the creation and shooting of Exemplum. How did the shoot go?

Pre-production started in the summer of 2020, which basically boiled down to me shopping for props and costumes on Amazon while securing my principal cast. Joe Griffin, who gave a wonderful performance as Louie Costa, had been my choice since the very beginning and we put out a casting call for Lilly. Within 20 seconds of seeing her audition tape, I wanted Brittany Lewis and she delivered. Francis Cronin, gives the film’s best performance as Father Liam. I met him through a mutual friend and he instantly took the role when I approached him. 

Filming began on a hot summer night in late September and I remember sitting in my car afterward actively contemplating whether or not I should pull the plug, but I persisted through the chaos. As shooting progressed over the course of seven weekends, I started finding my groove and we finished just a week ahead of Thanksgiving.

The day-to-day shoots were grueling. These were back-to-back 12-13 hour days with multiple set-ups in various locations. I had nothing left in me at the end of each day and I had to wake up at 5 a.m. the next day to start it all over. In truth, I loved every minute of it. I felt alive. I felt awake. I felt on. To make movies, you have to genuinely love the experience of being on-set and solving problems with the people around you, and, if I’m being entirely honest, I miss the intensity a bit. 

Can you talk about what you are working on now?

In the meantime, I am adapting one of my screenplays into a multi-episode fictional podcast that I will be making a formal announcement on in a month or two. I will give a vague hint: a coming-of-age teenage dramedy in the spirit of John Hughes and Cameron Crowe. 

I do, however, promise that this type of John Hughes teenage dramedy has never been done before, so stay tuned. 

We are both Catholic and I love films with Catholic themes even if the characters are flawed—like Martin Scorsese. What role does faith play in your vision?

Without mystery and doubt, we would have no faith. Exploring faith or moral concepts derived from faith means exploring the distance between God and Man. As St. Augustine rightly noted, civilization will always be a mind of its own, going toward God or away from God at any given moment in time, while being gently guided by God’s grace. True Christian storytelling (even of a secular brand) wanders the valley between saints and sinners, between righteousness and depravity, between certainty and absurdity. Christian storytelling respects the complexity of humanity, understanding that goodness sometimes comes in confusing packages while evil sometimes appears pristine and pure. To be a Christian storyteller is to be in love with the human soul, exploring its propensity for greatness and its propensity for great evil.