Written and directed by Rodrigo García, Last Days in the Desert has been hotly anticipated at Sundance, one of the largest independent film festivals in the US. Early reviews, at least for its cinematic values, are good. But McGregor himself has said that he wouldn’t call it a “faith-based film.”

“It’s not telling a Biblical story,” McGregor told Entertainment Weekly, of the story that depicts Jesus’ 40-day temptation in the desert from the gospel stories. “I think it’s a film about fathers and sons. Jesus and God are the ultimate father and son relationship.”

McGregor stars as both Jesus and the devil in new film ‘Last Days in the Desert’, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival at the weekend.

McGregor also plays Satan (or “the demon” as he is referred to in the film). According to Variety, the conflict between Jesus and Satan is portrayed as a war raging within Jesus, rather than an external encounter, exploring “the notion that the self, with its wants and desires, can be one’s own greatest enemy.”

But it was portraying Jesus that mostly intimidated McGregor, who told The Hollywood Reporter that he quickly began to instead looking at his role as “playing a man who’s trying to communicate with his father and who’s finding it frustrating and difficult to do so.”

“I think that’s the truth of what’s happening there, with Jesus in the desert,” said McGregor.

Straying from the gospel narrative, Jesus spends a month alone in the desert before coming across a family in the wilderness who offer him shelter.

“It’s about Jesus in the desert, who is being confronted by a demon and his involvement with a family who lives in the desert, particularly with the fate of the son in the family,” says Garcia in a 10-second summary of the film for the Sundance Festival.

The film has been touted as “intellectually opaque” but physically beautiful by The Hollywood Reporter and is shot by award-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lukezki (who also worked on Birdman and Gravity).

No news yet as to whether the film will grace Australian shores, though it may turn up in one of the Australian film festivals later in the year.