Monty Python's Life of Brian that the council had not seen the film, and had based their opinion on what they had been told by the Nationwide Festival of Light, a grouping with an evangelical Christian base, of which they knew nothing. Some bans continued into the 21st century. In 2008, Torbay Council finally permitted the film to be shown after it won an online vote for the English Riviera International Comedy Film Festival. In 2009, it was announced that a thirty-year-old ban of the film in the Welsh town of Aberystwyth had finally been lifted, and the subsequent showing was attended by Terry Jones
A Beautiful Life (2008 film) film was not released widely in North America until October 2, 2009, and first appeared on DVD on March 1, 2011. This was the second film by New Films International, a long-existing global independent film distribution company based in Sherman Oaks headed by Nesim Hason, whose new American division was led by Tim Swain. The company describes its focus as "festival-driven, high-quality, cast-driven indie films". "A Beautiful Life" received poor reviews from the twelve sources noted by the Rotten Tomatoes website. Metacritic gave the film a score of 13 out of 100, summarizing the reviews of the seven critics it