By Crispian Balmer

VENICE (Reuters) -Remember Amanda Seyfried as the sunny star of the ABBA “Mamma Mia” song-fests? Well, her latest musical “The Testament of Ann Lee” could not be more different.

The film, which premieres at the Venice Film Festival on Monday, follows Lee from her life as a child labourer in northern England in the 1700s to becoming the celibate leader of a radical Christian sect in America known as the Shakers.

“How many stories have we seen about male icons on a grand scale? How many stories again and again and again? Can we not get to see one story about a woman like this?” the film’s Norwegian director Mona Fastvold told reporters.

Fastvold said she cast Seyfried in the demanding lead role for her ability to access both gentle and fierce qualities that the complex

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