Journey to Bethlehem is a movie out in cinemas now telling the biblical story of the birth of Jesus. The live-action Christmas musical is a directorial debut for Swedish music producer Adam Anders, whose credits include the High School Musical franchise and US television series Glee.
Christian Today spoke with Adam to hear about his experience of making the film and what he hopes audiences will take away from it.
Why the nativity story as your directorial debut?
I wanted to watch something at Christmas and there was no movie that actually told the story of Christmas, especially as a musical. I wrote an 11-page treatment for this movie and it took me 17 years to make it. I feel that my whole career has been film school and preparing to make this movie. I’ve actually been asked to direct before and I said no because it’s such a huge commitment from a time standpoint and I’ve always had too many projects on at the same time. During Covid, however, I had nothing to do for six months so I sat down and finally had the time to polish the script and figure out what I wanted to do with it. I felt very strongly that this was my time to switch careers and get into directing. We had several versions of the script over the years, it’s been such a roller coaster emotionally!