This unusual documentary opens with a prayer for the film to fulfill itself and even a blessing for us, the audience about to experience the work. Director Seidl has deployed the simplest of means to record the very private ways in which six devout believers approach the intimacy of conversing with God. Seidl, a lapsed Catholic who is nonetheless open to the positive influences of faith, refuses to take the easy path by focusing on the hypocrisies or authoritarianism of organized religion. Instead, he tries to observe the daily vicissitudes of the faithful and in the process reveals the subtle ways in which adversity and good fortune by turns shape our lives and our understanding of a divine presence at work in the world.