{"id":5753,"date":"2026-08-12T06:38:23","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T06:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=5753"},"modified":"2026-08-12T06:38:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T06:38:23","slug":"caleb-landry-jones-on-the-five-year-battle-to-make-down-the-arm-of-god-confronting-prejudices-against-homelessness-and-how-luc-besson-saved-the-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=5753","title":{"rendered":"Caleb Landry Jones on the Five-Year Battle to Make \u2018Down the Arm of God,\u2019 Confronting Prejudices Against Homelessness and How Luc Besson Saved the Film"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tTrying to find funding for \u201cDown the Arm of God\u201d proved to be a difficult five-year ordeal for lead star and co-writer Caleb Landry Jones \u2014 one that brought the \u201cThree Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri\u201d and \u201cGet Out\u201d actor to terms with the very real-world prejudices that his film grapples with.<\/p>\n

Read more Hansal Mehta, Siddharth Bodke on \u2018Scam 2010\u2019 as First Look Unveiled for SonyLIV Series: \u2018A Story About Ambition, Influence and Arrogance\u2019 (EXCLUSIVE)<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSome people were worried about any kind of re-enactment of anyone\u2019s past. We were getting a lot of folks that felt what we were trying to do was not respectful, that we were getting into possible problems of white saviorism,\u201d Jones tells\u00a0Variety<\/em>\u00a0of the decision to cast real homeless people in Texas. \u201cOther things would be simply that the cast wasn\u2019t big enough. That my name isn\u2019t big enough. \u2018We need two or three other cast members that are stars!’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen \u201cLeon\u201d director Luc Besson saw how much Jones was struggling to secure funding while working with him on the 2025 horror film \u201cDracula,\u201d he decided to step in with funds and, essentially,\u00a0save\u00a0the film\u00a0under his EuropaCorp\u00a0producing banner. Now, \u201cDown the Arm of God\u201d will have its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival\u00a0in Switzerland\u00a0on Aug. 12.<\/p>\n

\n\tHelmed by Peter Brunner, who directed Jones in\u00a02018\u2019s\u00a0\u201cTo the Night,\u201d\u00a0Jones leads the cast as\u00a0Nick, a pastor set on making a change when he arrives in a small Texas town and sees the homeless epidemic\u00a0quietly\u00a0happening in everyone\u2019s backyard.\u00a0However,\u00a0he\u00a0is swiftly met with pushback from the local community, especially after\u00a0Nick\u00a0invites the homeless encampment to sleep inside their church during the harsh winter.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe pushback eventually escalates\u00a0to\u00a0violence, leading\u00a0Nick\u00a0to confront his connection to God.\u00a0Jones says there were times when he questioned\u00a0Nick\u2019s\u00a0earnestness: \u201cI like the ambiguity and these aspects of the character. This was Peter\u2019s choice from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film, which is based in part on true events, started simply as a story of forgiveness between father and son. The estranged father-son dynamic\u00a0remains\u00a0central, as\u00a0Nick\u00a0feels called to action after\u00a0struggling\u00a0to\u00a0help his father, who is suffering from\u00a0poverty. That framework eventually became a vehicle to work with the homeless community \u201cwithout forcing any language down anybody\u2019s throats,\u201d Jones says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Brunner and Jones began digging into research over the course of five years and meeting with nonprofit organizations across Dallas, Austin and Amarillo, they kept hearing the same note: \u201cWe couldn\u2019t make this film with actors, that we\u2019d be doing a disservice to portray homelessness in our country,\u201d Jones says.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat note was also echoed by the homeless people that Brunner and Jones, who penned the screenplay together, spoke to.<\/p>\n

Read more \u2018The Brink of War\u2019 Review: Reagan and Gorbachev Engage in Unengaging Verbal Battle<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tOver the course of five years, many of the homeless people who agreed to be part of \u201cDown the Arm of God\u201d died before production could begin. \u201cThe film is, in a big way, dedicated to those people as well,\u201d Jones says.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe violence that the film builds to \u2014 with protestors in the conservative, homogeneous Texas community holding \u201cWhite Lives Matter\u201d signs directed at the people of color in the homeless encampment \u2014 is another way Jones and Brunner aimed to directly reflect reality. \u201cEverything is there because it felt like if it wasn\u2019t there, we were negating it,\u201d Jones says.<\/p>\n

\n\tJones commends many of the homeless people who made their on-screen debut and tapped into their\u00a0own\u00a0personal experiences.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe work itself wasn\u2019t easy, but to do the work was very easy. Some of the best actors I\u2019ve ever worked with were on this film because it really was on the line of \u2014 it wasn\u2019t really acting sometimes, and sometimes it was rooted in a memory. It\u2019s a real memory that the person is speaking of. Sometimes it is fabricated, especially for myself and my character. I am not a pastor, and my father is not homeless \u2026 A lot of things. I\u2019m the outlier in the group,\u201d Jones says. \u201cWhat was difficult were the logistics and trying to get people to understand the severity of homelessness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the film nears its festival debut, Jones hopes the film will make audiences across the world reckon with how close everyone is to the poverty line \u2014 especially as the homeless epidemic only gets \u201cworse.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s something that most of us deny ourselves all the time, that we are far removed because we have this job. We have these things in our life that we see as steady,\u201d Jones says. \u201cI think COVID woke a lot of people up financially and seeing the repercussions of so many jobs disappearing at once, but I don\u2019t think we really woke up to the fact that it could be us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Jenna Ortega \u2018Would Go All Day\u2019 Without Food or Water as a Child Star to Make Sure She Wasn\u2019t \u2018In the Way of Anybody\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Caleb Landry Jones breaks down the difficulties making “Down the Arm of God” and how the film confronts prejudices against homelessness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4478,4479,1906],"class_list":["post-5753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-caleb-landry-jones","tag-down-the-arm-of-god","tag-locarno-film-festival-2"],"yoast_head":"\nCaleb Landry Jones on the Five-Year Battle to Make \u2018Down the Arm of God,\u2019 Confronting Prejudices Against Homelessness and How Luc Besson Saved the Film - Relocation Observer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=5753\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Caleb Landry Jones on the Five-Year Battle to Make \u2018Down the Arm of God,\u2019 Confronting Prejudices Against Homelessness and How Luc Besson Saved the Film - 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