The Globe and Mail

Not too long ago Mark Peranson (of the Vancouver Film Festival and Cinemascope magazine) got a cheery text from his friend, film producer Montse Triola: “Albert would like U to perform Saint Joseph. What do U think? Fancy?”

Peranson's not an actor, he's a film journalist and programmer, but who could turn down the opportunity to make his acting debut playing the patriarch of Christianity's first family? So he got on the next plane to Barcelona, where he slept on the floor of director Albert Serra's apartment before embarking on a weird filmic adventure.

To say “weird” doesn't really sum up El Cant Dels Ocells (as it's called in Catalan; in English it's Birdsong). Birdsong is the story of the three kings who went in search of Jesus, but filmed in Iceland and the Canary Islands, using only natural light, with a cast of nonprofessionals speaking an improvised script.

 Each of the “actors” playing the kings – a tennis instructor, a construction worker and the construction worker's father - is called Lluis. In the film, the kings speak Catalan and Peranson speaks Hebrew.

Triola, the producer, also plays Mary.

There's actually one line of English: “At one point, Mary was holding this lamb and I looked over and said, ‘The lamb just pooed on you,'” Peranson said. “I think that made the final cut.”

 As for reviews of his first on-screen performance, Peranson says someone who saw an early cut of the film asked, “Were you deliberately acting stoned?”