#THEDIVINEPLAN
A NEW MOTION PICTURE BY ROBERT ORLANDO
A president and a pope: an unlikely pair who combine
deep faith with political acumen and a shared revulsion for the evil of Soviet Communism.
ABOUT THE FILM
THE DIVINE PLAN: REAGAN, JOHN PAUL II & The End of the Cold War/ A film by Robert Orlando It remains the least-known story of the twentieth century... A president and a pope; an unlikely pair who combine deep faith with political acumen and high-octane star power. A plot that involves two assassination attempts, KGB scheming, CIA intrigue and the final act to topple the Soviet Empire.
The Director
This epic saga takes a writer-director with deep knowledge of religious and political history on a quest to tell this compelling true-life story. Robert Orlando, whose credits include Apostle Paul: A Polite Bribe and the recent Silence Patton: First Victim of the Cold War, takes viewers behind the scenes of a partnership that changed the world, asking daring questions… Was a pontiff and politician’s work overthrowing communism the result of inexorable political and economic forces, or could it have been part of what Reagan called, “The Divine Plan”? Told in part as a graphic thriller this highly-stylized motion picture film pushes beyond the bounds of conventional documentary-making into a world where one’s belief might determine the facts.
Cast of Characters
To solve the mystery, Orlando interrogates a crack team of world-renowned scholars, politicians, historians and journalists including Paul Kengor, Douglas Brinkley, Richard Allen, John O'Sullivan, Craig Shirley, Steve Kotkin, George Weigel, Bishop Robert Barron, Anne Applebaum, Monika Jablonska, Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, HW Brands and Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
Probing deep into the shadows of the Cold War, they expose events supporting a vivid and uncommon mission during that tumultuous time.
THE STORY BEHIND THE DIVINE PLAN BOOK
The Divine Plan: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Dramatic End of the Cold War “Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan were preserved through this suffering for a high purpose. I don’t think you’ ll understand either one of them without understanding that.”
—Bishop Robert Barron
In late spring 2019, ISI will publish the follow-up to Dr. Paul Kengor’s acclaimed bestseller A Pope and a President. For The Divine Plan, Kengor teams up with writer-director Robert Orlando to dive deeper into the pivotal bond between Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan. Just six weeks apart in the spring of 1981, the pope and the president took bullets from would-be assassins. Surviving strikingly similar near-death experiences, they confided to each other a shared conviction: that God had spared their lives for the purpose of defeating communism. The Divine Plan draws on the film's exclusive interviews with renowned historians, scholars, journalists, and church officials.
When ISI published Paul Kengor’s A Pope and a President in May 2017, the book became an immediate critical and commercial success. ISI had to go back to reprint just two days after publication, and the book now has more than 40,000 copies in print! Kengor has given hundreds of interviews and dozens of speeches about the book—at the Reagan Library, the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Center, the U.S. Naval Academy, and many other places. Now he has teamed up with writer director Robert Orlando (Moment in Time, Apostle Paul, Silence Patton), an author himself, to dive deeper into the singular bond between John Paul II and Ronald Reagan—the partnership that ended the Cold War. Shorter and more focused than A Pope and a President, The Divine Plan also boasts an even greater range of authorities. Orlando interviews more than a dozen experts, including well-known historians Douglas Brinkley, H.W. Brands, Anne Applebaum, John O’Sullivan, and Craig Shirley; the leading biographer of John Paul II, George Weigel; close Reagan adviser Richard V. Allen; and Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Bishop Robert Barron. The Divine Plan will be released in conjunction with the docudrama of the same name.
