Hail Mary (film) Hail Mary (film) Hail Mary () is a 1985 French drama film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The film is a modern retelling of the story of a virgin birth. It was entered into the 35th Berlin International Film Festival. All screenings in its initial theatrical distribution were accompanied by the short film "The Book of Mary" () by Godard's longtime companion and collaborator Anne-Marie Miéville. Marie, a student, works at her father's Swiss gas station and plays basketball for a local team; she claims to be a virgin and maintains a chaste relationship with her boyfriend Joseph, a
Veneration of Mary in the Catholic Church with the Virgin Mary, to magnify with her the great things the Lord has done for her, and to entrust supplications and praises to her. The earliest known Marian prayer is the Sub tuum praesidium, or "Beneath Thy Protection", a text for which was rediscovered in 1917 on a papyrus in Egypt dated to c. 250. The papyrus contains the prayer in Greek and is the earliest known reference to the title Theotokos (confirmed by the Council of Ephesus in 431): Beneath your compassion, We take refuge, O Mother of God: do not despise our petitions in time of trouble: