(EDITOR’S NOTE: Exemplum does contain some foul language, violence and conversation about sexual themes.)

Young filmmaker Paul Roland has been earning praise for his recent film Exemplum, which was made for $10,000.  It tells the story of a priest who lets his ego and ambition drive him to criminal activity, realizing that he ultimately should rely solely on God. The Stream’s review of Exemplum can be found here. 

Roland is a Catholic who says he puts his faith at the center of his work. The Stream recently spoke to him about his film. Roland was at his home in Pasadena, where he lives and works with his wife and newborn daughter.

Mark Judge: How Did You Make Exemplum for $10K?

Paul Roland: The short answer: through grit, innovation, and dogged determination in the face of what seemed like insurmountable challenges.

Since 2015, I have written a total of six feature film screenplays, but as many of you know, getting a project off the ground is extraordinarily difficult in this industry, no matter how talented or well-connected you are.

In the summer of 2019, I wrote a short film that I intended to produce for just $5,000. However, as I was gathering the funds, I quickly began to realize an unfortunate truth: short films are a dime-a-dozen and there is very little chance of getting hired to create a feature film off of one. With that in mind, I resolved to follow in the footsteps of Christopher Nolan, Robert Rodriguez, Darren Aronofsky, and so many of the 1990s independent filmmakers who jumpstarted their careers with ultra-low budget films using all the raw materials at their disposal. I figured that if I revered these artists so much, why not emulate what they accomplished?

After lobbying for several months, I received the initial check of $6,000 just two weeks before the coronavirus pandemic hit. You can imagine how incredibly difficult it was for me to focus my creative energy through lockdowns and an uncertain economic future. But come June 2020, I finished the script. Around this time, my wife and I discovered she was pregnant with our daughter. So, needless to say, I knew I had a very small time window to get this movie shot before her arrival.

Come July, our upstairs neighbor, while renovating his unit, broke a water main due to an act of negligence and flooded our condo. For the next few months, my now-pregnant wife and I were forced to bounce around in Airbnbs so our home could be repaired. The situation became so untenable that we eventually decided to sell our home.

I knew that I would never get a professional chance like this ever again and I knew I had to soldier on. No matter how challenging or hard it got, I made a vow that I was not going to quit. And believe me, there were days I desperately wanted to.

Throughout the summer of 2020, I gathered the materials (costumes, props, equipment) and cast the principal characters. Filming began on a hot Friday night in late September; we had only three crew members. Seven weekends later, the movie wrapped on the eve of Thanksgiving.

My daughter arrived in February 2021 and I got little sleep for the next six months as I worked a full-time job and edited the film on my computer at night, often working into the wee hours of the morning. One year later, in 2022, I had a final cut. One year after that, following a run on the festival circuit, I had the film distributed.

Judge: Why the Religious Theme? Are You Catholic?

Roland: I would describe myself as a committed Catholic, meaning one who believes in the precepts and mission of the Church, following those to the best of my ability, however flawed or imperfect or confused or downright incapable I may be.

My Catholic spirituality serves as the foundation for all my work, no matter the genre or subject matter. Even if I were to make a movie with no overt religiosity, themes and ideas informed by my faith would be baked into the story.

With Exemplum, I had previously written a script that dealt with similar concepts: surveillance, power obtained through the weaponization of people’s foibles, the exploitation of values, Machiavellian moral traps, and rejection of the truth for worldly ends. So, having already explored these ideas, I knew I could distill them down into a smaller, character-based noir thriller

When it came time to draft the script, I had already the idea of a priest who records his confessions for paranoid reasons, I just had no idea where the story would take me.

Judge: Who Inspired You to be a Filmmaker?

Roland: I often say that I did not choose this, it chose me. For whatever reason, events occurred in my youth that made it clear to me that I had a calling to be a filmmaker, however difficult or confusing that road may be. After years of doubting the authenticity and truth of that calling, I finally found the confidence to pursue it with every fiber of my being.

Judge: Is There Room for Conservative Filmmakers in Hollywood?

Roland: That question requires a nuanced answer. Yes, but I want to be clear about something. The most conservative people in Hollywood are the artists who love their craft with such adoration that they would rather cut their arms off than see their work destroyed by political propaganda. These types of people would shriek at woke ideology being plugged into their films in the same breath they would shriek at an on-the-nose line about the evils of big government or the importance of the 2nd Amendment.

It will be artists passionate about exploring the human condition, artists passionate about uniting audiences under classically universal themes, and artists passionate about creating something timeless who save Hollywood from the woke cancer that has been plaguing it for nearly a decade.

Judge: What’s Next for You?

Roland: I am happy to report that I completed my next script and have begun the initial stages of bringing it to fruition. Stay tuned for what we have in store.

Mark Judge is a writer and filmmaker in Washington, D.C. His new book is The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs the New American Stasi.